


Never Leave A Man Behind

by Seer_of_Soul



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020), Final Fantasy VII: Remake
Genre: -holds up potato- I just think they're neat, And JENOVA, Animalistic SOLDIERs, Based off a headcanon/theory, It’s the Mako, Memory Loss, Memory Magic, Mental Health Issues, No Beta, No Sex, Rating May Change, but no actual sex, does that change the rating?, jokes about sex, mostly - Freeform, talking about sex and sexuality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23195164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seer_of_Soul/pseuds/Seer_of_Soul
Summary: (Based on a Headcanon/Theory for the FFVII Remake. I think some of Cloud’s old trooper buddies are gonna recognize him and go ‘what gives?’ Although this is completely different from how I think the Remake's take on it will go.)Cloud’s old troop catches sight of their missing, supposedly dead trooper buddy and decide they need to find him to see what exactly is going on.Randy took a shaky breath, closing his eyes until his breathing smoothed out. “I was in the group chasing Avalanche after the first reactor blew.” There was a long pause as he stared down at the marks in the table, gathering his thoughts. “I- saw Cloud.”“Seriously?” Reed breathed. “Randy.... You sure it was Cloud? It wouldn’t be the first time one of us thought we saw him.” He made an aborted gesture towards Tag.Randy shook his head, raising his face to stare blankly in front of him. “It was him. I know it was. He looked older, sure. But he-“ His eyes went wide and he jumped up as much as he could in his seat, pointing at something across the bar. “He’s right there!”
Relationships: Cloud Strife & Original Character(s), Original Character(s) & Original Character(s)
Comments: 64
Kudos: 179





	1. Midgar

Tagger Blacke found the rest of his party clustered around a table in a dimly lit bar in the back of the sector four slums. They were all dressed in casual clothes, their infantry uniforms left behind. Though Ward, who was leaning back into the corner of the booth, had his scarf still on.  


Ward was a big guy with a voice like thunder to match. He tended to be soft spoken most of the time, and mute the rest. He was from Banora, a city far south where the people were heartier than they looked, and still had his copper complexion after decades of living in Midgar. He was the oldest in the group, with the barest wisps of silver just starting to discolor his dark blond hair. He was sporting five-o’clock-shadow under the infantry scarf, though it was bisected by a long white scar that went from the corner of his right eye to his chin. Somehow he always found clothes that looked several sizes too big, although Sparrow always joked that he must have stolen them from a giant. His favorite was his big brown leather jacket, because even he could nestle inside it easily.  


Leaning back in the booth, Ward had his snap back hat yanked low over his eyes and had tucked his chin into his scarf so he could pretend he was asleep and ignoring everyone else. He could never commit to it though. Sooner or later, someone would say something and he’d respond perfectly naturally, almost like he’d forgotten he was pretending to be asleep.  


Aiji and Sparrow were already trying to outdrink each other. There were already a few beer bottles clustered at the end of the table and several shot glasses stacked into semi precarious towers. They were just getting started at it really, judging by the number of glasses. Tag wondered who’d started the competition this time, because either one of them was just as likely. They were having a conversation between drinks, though it looked a bit more like an argument. It looked like Aiji was winning.  


Reed, meanwhile, was shoveling food into his mouth so fast you’d think someone had threatened to take it away from him. It looked like a salad of some kind, though it looked like there was a lot of meat in it. He interjected his input between forkfuls, eager to input his two cents.  


Reed grew up in the Kalm area, though his family was originally from Icicle, and it showed. He was built sturdy and thick, naturally insulated from the cold. His hair was a deep red, pulled back into a low ponytail that fell about halfway down his back. He had a lopsided smile, and when he grinned the scar across the bridge of his nose squirmed like a snake. He had a part time hobby as a mechanic, and even went so far as to continue requesting his shift be in the weapons development department.  


He wore nice clothes when he wasn’t on duty, button up shirts and slacks. Tonight, though, he’d ditched them for a long-sleeved shirt with a band’s graphic logo plastered across it.  


Tag felt his lips twitch into a smile as he wound his way through the scattering of tables inside the bar. They really were a motley crew. There was still one of them missing. But they were expecting him to be late.  


Tag tapped Sparrow’s shoulder when he got close enough. Sparrow nearly choked on his shot, blinking up at Tag with big brown eyes. “Hey! Ni-San!”  


“It’s pronounced ‘niisan’!” Aiji snapped, looking half tempted to chuck his own shot glass across the table.  


Sparrow waved him off, not the least bit concerned. “You, sir, are late!” He jabbed a finger at Tag’s chest and scooted over, knocking Ward’s knees out of the way. Ward grumbled, but twisted to make room.  


Sparrow grinned up at him with that same cocky smile as always. He looked like a slum kid, kind mousy and lanky like he hadn’t eaten enough growing up. But he’d grown up outside of Midgar, in a little town on the southernmost peninsula of the western continent. His hair was a mousy brown, cut in a way that let it flop in his eyes when he tilted his head forward too much, just a few shades darker than his dark complexion. His eyes were the odd shade of hazel-brown that made them look gold under direct sunlight.  


His fingers were almost always moving, whether it was fiddling with the buttons on his vest or on the sleeves of his button-up. He had a necklace around his neck that he chewed on in place of his nails. He had switched his favorite pair of running shoes, white and blue, out for black and blue ones when he’d gotten to Midgar. There was just no keeping them clean enough to look any shade of white. But he kept the laces from them twined around his wrist. He changed out the charm for a new one every few weeks. He was easy to buy presents for.  


“I got caught up on the train,” Tag sighed, half as an apology and half as an explanation. He slid into the open space on the booth. It was cramped, but no one was falling off or sitting in someone’s lap, so it was fine. “I didn’t have any problems, but someone in a different car held it up a bit. Donno why. Apparently they majorly upped the security checks.”  


“Yeah,” Reed exclaimed around a forkful of food. “That’s cause Avalanche, ya know? Heard they took a train to get to the reactors.”  


Aiji raised both his eyebrows and frowned. “Literally everyone takes the train to the reactors, or anywhere else actually. Unless you want to walk.”  


Reed waved his hand dismissively. “Details...!”  


“Details are important though...,” Tag murmured. “Like what kind of meat is that?”  


“It’s beef!”  


“It is?”  


“Of course it is!”  


“Shush,” Ward grumbled.  


“Back to the Land of the Living, Ward?” Sparrow teased, elbowing the much larger man. Ward huffed through his nose and settled back against the booth.  


Tag chuckled softly as Aiji waved down their waitress. He glanced around the table, quietly reveling in the comfortability of it. This troop had adopted him years ago, just after a long, difficult mission. The memory of that three-day mission vacillated between a blurry panicked feeling and all too detailed. Not long after they’d gotten back, most of them still half mummified in bandages, the troopers decided he was their SOLDIER. They’d been dragging him along in their hangouts ever since.  


The troop was named Lords of Strife, apparently named after the first little trooper they’d lost, years ago. That had been long before they’d assimilated Tag, so he didn’t know much about the trooper. Tag just knew that he hadn’t come back from the same special mission that had killed the General. He knew better than to ask more than that. It was clear that they were still hurting from that loss. Tag thought he’d heard someone say that the first loss was always the hardest.  


Apparently they looked alike, Tag and the little lost trooper; kinda scrawny and young looking, with messy blond hair that apparently likened to a Chocobo butt, and blue eyes, though the others always mumbled that Tag’s were bluer from the Mako.  


Aiji ordered more drinks for Sparrow and himself, Tag tagging on his own drink order. The waitress stared down at Tag for a long, tense moment. He paled. He knew that look. She recognized him as SOLDIER. Tag looked away, feeling heat crawling up his face.  


“Can I get an order of chips too, Miss?” Reed interjected, batting his big brown eyes at her. She hesitated a moment longer, then nodded and hurried away.  


“Geez,” Sparrow muttered. “So much for customer service.”  


“I should go...,” Tag muttered.  


“No way!” Sparrow grabbed him by the shoulder of his shirt, holding him in the booth. “It’s not like that, Ni-San!”  


“It’s ‘niisan’!” Aiji snapped. Quick as a whip, he planted his boot on the outside of Tag’s legs, keeping his knee under the table of the booth. “He is right though. It’s nothing as bad as you’re thinking.”  


Sparrow hooked his arm around Tag’s neck, yanking him down, close to his chest. “Geez! How is a guy like you always so negative?”  


“A guy like me?” Tag twisted his head to look up at Sparrow.  


“Yeah, well, it’s kinda a stereotype, but aren’t blonds supposed to be fun or something?”  


“That’s definitely a stereotype,” Reed muttered, rolling his eyes. “And not even an accurate one. How’s your hair color supposed to affect your personality?”  


“But still!” Sparrow protested. “Stop worrying so much Ni-San.”  


“Say ‘Ni-San’ again.” Aiji muttered, narrowing his eyes. He glared at Sparrow bitterly as he took a drink from his beer.  


Aiji was half-Wutaian, though he was born in Midgar. He’d grown up learning both Common and Wutaian and took pride in both his heritages. He had tried teaching them Wutaian, with varying degrees of success. Aiji dressed loudly, with a bright red leather jacket and silver studded black boots. He wore his black hair short, even kept it buzzed on one side. The style had the bonus effect of highlighting the three piercings he had in each ear. He usually took the earrings out when he was on duty, but for a night just hanging in the bar he’d put on an expensive looking dragon piece that curled around the shell of his ear. The other pieces were to augment the dragon, dark red and black rings and studs. His eyes were dark, made even more so by the small bits of dark eye makeup he put on for special occasions, like going out to out drink Sparrow. Aiji was actually the one to come up with Tag’s nickname.  


It had started when Tag was a SOLDIER Third-Class. Aiji had come up with the endearing nickname ‘San-Ban-San’, ‘San-Ban’ meaning ‘third’ and the ending ‘San’ being a title, like a ‘Mr.’ San-Ban-San had gotten almost immediately shortened to ‘San-San’.  


When Tag had made Second-Class, not long after getting adopted by the Lords of Strife troop, the nickname had changed to Ni-San, which happened to be the way to say ‘big brother’. Aiji, never one to pass up the opportunity to turn something into a pun, immediately dubbed Tag ‘niisan’ and insisted the others call him that too. Unfortunately, Sparrow’s pronunciation sucked, hence the constant bickering. Well, if it wasn’t about one thing, it was another.  


They talked briefly about Avalanche, and the reactors exploding. But wisely no one mentioned the sector seven plate falling the day before yesterday. There was still smoke rising from it. There had been surprisingly few Shinra losses, but there still had been some. One of Tag’s SOLDIER roommates was assigned to sift through the rubble for survivors. He tried not to think about it.  


~  


Half an hour later and somehow they’d gotten hung up on talking about scuttlebutt. Tag rolled his eyes as Sparrow started another story. “Oh yeah! One of the guys in the barracks was talking about this girl he hooked up with. He said she had huuuuuuuuge breasts!” He gestured with his hands, forming imaginary breasts that looked like they would mangle the poor woman’s spine.  


“Is this Conrad Burrow we’re talking about here?” Reed snickered. When Sparrow nodded yes, he snorted. “Now, I know you know he’s full of shit.”  


“Isn’t he though?” Sparrow grinned. “I was walking with him this one time, a couple weeks ago, and we were passing this group of girls -on the upper plate, mind you. He had his helmet off ‘cause he was coming off duty, and I swear one of the girls actually made this face.”  


Sparrow, fairly convincingly, mimicked a frowning, gasping face that looked like a PHS emoticon. “So I assume he tried flirting with her.”  


Aiji snorted into his drink, sputtering as he tried to not spew it out his nose. Tag’s eyebrows furrowed as he examined the face Sparrow made. He sat back in his seat and tried to mimic it. Reed glanced towards him and lost whatever control he still had over his composure. He collapsed against the wall in a fit of giggles. And he hadn’t even been drinking anything stronger than soda!  


Sparrow flashed a self-satisfied grin at Tag, then looked past him. “Well look what the Behemoth dragged through the mud! Hey, Rand.”  


The rest of the table turned their heads to see their last, wayward companion making his way through the bar towards them. Randy raised one hand in greeting, looking down so he could watch his step.  


Sparrow had only been teasing about the Behemoth, but Randy did look like something had dragged him through the mud. His shoulders were slumped and tense, and he was shuffling more than walking. His hair, the unshaved side was usually pulled into a dozen small braids, interwoven with whatever color of ribbon he’d picked as his favorite of the week, but as he shuffled closer, they all could see that it was lacking any kind of decoration. Some of his hair was starting to fall out of the braids, hanging loosely around his face.  


He was still wearing his infantry uniform from the waist down, which looked like he might have slept in it, or not slept at all. It looked out of place with the cropped jacket and punk band shirt. He stumbled a little over nothing, but managed to catch himself. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.  


Aiji stood up from the table silently and guided Randy into the booth, then sat down next to him. He pushed one of his untouched glasses towards him. The competition was over.  


Randy mumbled a short “Thanks” as he took the drink. He looked so tired. He downed it in a single swig, setting the glass down gingerly, almost like he was afraid of breaking it, and settled back against the booth.  


The table was quiet for a long moment, until Ward spoke up. “What’s wrong?” The silence wasn’t broken as much as it was overpowered. It sank down under the rolling sound of Ward’s voice like sinking wood under a wave.  


Randy took a shaky breath, closing his eyes until his breathing smoothed out. “I was in the group chasing Avalanche after the first reactor blew.” There was a long pause as he stared down at the marks in the table, gathering his thoughts. “I- saw Cloud.”  


“What?!” Sparrow cried, nearly jumping out of his seat. His knees banged the table, and would have sent the stacked shot glasses toppling if Tag and Aiji didn’t have such good reflexes.  


Sparrow shot the two of them an apologetic look, then leaned over the table. “You saw him? Where?!”  


Tag blinked, tilting his head as Randy sighed over the top of another glass that had appeared in front of him. “He’s... with Avalanche. He was running from Reactor One not long after it blew. We had him surrounded and cornered before I really saw him. He jumped on a train going by and... we lost him.” Randy put one hand over his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “He was wearing... an old First-Class uniform, the black one.”  


“Seriously?” Reed breathed. “Randy.... You sure it was Cloud? It wouldn’t be the first time one of us thought we saw him. Or even saw a SOLDIER that we thought was him.” He made an aborted gesture towards Tag.  


Randy shook his head, raising his face to stare blankly in front of him. “It was him. I know it was. He looked older, sure. But he-“ His eyes went wide and he jumped up as much as he could in his seat, pointing at something across the bar. “He’s right there!”  


Tag, Sparrow, and Ward turned and saw the little TV in the corner of the bar playing the news. On the screen was the video footage of a chase. A three wheeled car and a motorcycle were being pursued down the highway. The car was unremarkable, just swerving and speeding up when necessary. But the motorcycle, or rather, the guy on the motorcycle, was sure something.  


Tag could recognize the similarities between them, if only because they’d been pointed out to him several times before. Their hair was similar, though the cyclist’s was much spikier, even with the wind blowing it down. Their frames were similar, though Tag thought he might have been a little taller, if they stood side by side. The cyclist was wearing a First-Class uniform, though one of his pauldrons was missing. Tag couldn’t see his eyes, especially not through the grainy picture the TV was showing, but he expected that they’d been the same Mako-enhanced blue.  


The cyclist had a buster style sword in his hand, and wielded it effortlessly to bat away their pursuers. It was next to impossible for anyone not enhanced to even lift that thing, but this guy was wielding it like he’d been born with it in his hand. A mixture of nausea and jealousy and something else curled tight around Tag’s stomach. But he couldn’t look away.  


“That is Cloud,” Ward breathed. His tone cut though the stunned silence like a hot knife. And that was that. It was Cloud. Their little lost trooper had been found.  


“Hey! Hey!” Reed waved at the bartender. “Turn that up.”  


Tag felt his stomach drop as the news anchor went over the story again, and again, and then again. The same story on repeat, for almost a half hour. The whole bar sat in a stifling silence as the story of the president’s murder and the assailants’ escape played over and over.  


Tag eventually turned around and laid his forehead in his hands, twining his fingers through his hair. There was a press conference with the new president of Shinra starting, but that’s when someone turned down the volume and the bar erupted into a sea of noise. Tag grit his teeth as his poor, oversensitive ears rang from the noise.  


Sparrow patted his back sympathetically. “So... what do we do now?”  


“Do!?” Reed exclaimed. “What do you mean ‘what do we do?’ What-“ He shook his head.  


“That was Cloud,” Sparrow said softly. “I have no idea how, but that... that was Cloud. So what do we do?”  


“What can we do?” Aiji muttered. “Not like we can email his PHS and say ‘what’s going on?’ But-“ He paused, then subtly looked around the bar. He glanced towards Tag. “Are there any Turks in here?” He asked in a whisper.  


Tag blinked, a little taken aback. He carefully scanned the crowd, but didn’t see any sign of a Turk within it. He shook his head. “Not that I can see.” He wasn’t completely sure though. A feeling of nervousness started rising from where the nauseous jealousy had settled in his stomach. Uh oh.  


Aiji nodded shortly, then leaned forward. “But we have to do something, right?”  


“The Lords of Strife never leave a man behind,” Randy nodded in agreement. “At least not until we talk to him.”  


“News says Shinra personnel chased them out of the city,” Reed muttered, squinting to read off the text banner on the TV. “East gate. Think they’re headed towards Kalm?”  


“Most likely.”  


Ward raised his head. “We should request leave time. It’ll look suspicious as hell if we all just disappeared. We’d lose our jobs at best and probably end up getting court martialed for going AWOL.”  


“But it’d take weeks for Heidegger to get to the requests! Months probably!” Sparrow groaned, dropping his head into his arms and tangling his hands into his hair.  


“I could ask him directly,” Tag said suddenly. The others stared at him. Tag looked back at them plainly. “If I hand them to him directly, and talk sweet enough, I can get them signed and executed before the morning shift.”  


“Really?” Reed gaped at him. “You can? You’d do that... for us?”  


“Is there a reason you’d think I wouldn’t?” Tag raised an eyebrow.  


“Well, I guess not. But Heidegger is... Heidegger. I’m... flattered, I guess.”  


Tag smirked with a confidence that wasn’t his own. “Get the leave forms to me and I’ll get them signed.” He slipped out of the booth. The others followed.  


~  


Standing next to Director Heidegger was uneasy at any time. But standing next to him when he was seated at his desk was not a pleasant experience by any stretch of the imagination. Heidegger hated doing paperwork, and since the (late) President Shinra had scolded him every time his paperwork was torn or wrinkled, Heidegger saved his paper by taking his frustrations out on whoever happened to be unfortunate enough to be close to him.  


Thankfully Tag had gotten to his office almost right after Heidegger had sat down, walking in late from a meeting with the new President Shinra. Rufus Shinra was certainly a charismatic man. Heidegger was doing his paperwork quietly, without a Turk standing at his back. The man was imposing enough without a Turk in the room. He was a big guy, with an even bigger temper.  


Tag had swallowed his nerves and stepped confidently into the director’s office, six leave request forms in hand, everything filled out, except the director’s signature. He stood silently, facing the door in parade rest, as Heidegger looked over the forms. With his arms folded obediently behind his back, he picked at the edges of the sleeves of the black sheer long sleeve top he wore under his red Second-Class SOLDIER-knit-top. It was a rare exception to the uniform, wearing long sleeves, but Tag was happy with it. He didn’t remember exactly why….  


Heidegger mumbled something under his breath. Tag’s eyes snapped towards him. “Sir?”  


Heidegger glanced up at him. “Hell of a time to request leave,” he grumbled.  


“One of them got a letter from back home, Sir. Said there was a sudden increase in fiend activity, which worried him. The others want to go too.” He gave a half shrug. “Loyalty to their squad and all.”  


“I see that,” Heidegger huffed, shifting the papers around. “Why the hell does that mean you go too?”  


Tag let a lazy smile spread across his lips. “He said someone thinks they saw a Behemoth, out in the distance. So they asked me if I could help, we’ve been on some missions together, you see, and get along well enough.” He gave a small dry laugh. “The fiends around there are mostly low level, nothing tougher than a big Kalm Fang, so I really doubt anyone really saw a Behemoth. You know civilians tend to panic over nothing.”  


Heidegger snorted a chuckle into his mustache. “Right.”  


Tag waited a moment to see if he was going to say anything else, then continued when he didn’t. “So, I really don’t expect much trouble at all. And I have some leave time saved up myself.”  


“How much leave?”  


“Close to four months, Sir.”  


Heidegger made a face and wrinkled his nose. Leave time was hard to come by in SOLDIER, so the fact that Tag had so much, could take off for so long, probably didn’t sit well with him.  


“I know it’s a bit of an inopportune time....” He shuffled slightly, taking a breath and shrugging one shoulder. “But I doubt anyone, even the president, would miss just one lowly Second and less than a half-dozen troopers.”  


He glanced down at Heidegger, seeing the man’s eyebrows twitch up and his lips press together. Tag dipped his head a little, pausing a moment. This bit was the kicker, the golden cherry of his argument. “It’d boost morale in the men too, if you let them go check up on their families. So much has happened lately, it’s a trying time.” He tilted his head a little. “And if I might accompany them, Sir, I’d gladly burn twice the leave time that I’d actually use.”  


Heidegger turned his head at that, eyebrows raising. He examined Tag’s face. He wasn’t wearing the SOLDIER helmet. No one was allowed to in the office areas, due to past break ins. Tag stared back at him calmly, innocently, obediently. Mentally though, he pleaded for Heidegger to bite.  


Heidegger’s eyebrow quirked upwards, almost leering now. Tag felt a cold feeling in the back of his mind. He didn’t like that look.  


The director’s PHS buzzed, drawing his attention away from Tag, who barely caught himself from breathing out a sigh of relief. Heidegger tapped something in his PHS, scowling. He grumbled something about “fucking Turks.” But he picked up his expensive looking pen and signed the request forms.  


Tag left the office like he’d left a huge weight behind him. He’d just started to relax, almost allowed himself to slip out of the professional SOLDIER mindset, when he saw Director Scarlet standing just on the other side of the door.  


Scarlet was notorious for causing problems for SOLDIERs, usually by flirting with them at inopportune moments, or at all really. It was a well-known non-secret that she would use infantry men as footstools too. Thankfully, for those in Midgar, she tended to stay in Junon, more than happily squandering work hours and pay on what was practically a permanent vacation. It wasn’t so fortunate for the personnel in Junon though.  


‘It’s a balancing act done on a knife’s edge,’ Tag remembered someone saying once.  


To try to reject her was a dangerous thing, she was a top chair executive and didn’t take no lightly, but accepting her attention could end up just as bad. It was rarely affection, if it ever was. Scarlet just liked to play mind games. It was probably a show of power. She would flex her fingers to bend strong men to her will. That’s part of what made her such a good, ruthless director.  


Scarlet’s eyebrows bounced up behind her hair when she saw him, dark red lips curling up at the edges. Tag mentally begged for her to let him just leave, for her to be in a hurry, for the Shinra tower to come crashing down around them, anything to get him out of this.  


No such luck. Fuck.  


“Where’s the fire, soldier?” She hummed, tapping a finger against her jawline and tilting her head.  


“No fire Ma’am,” Tag replied shortly. He stepped to the side, hand hovering over the button to open the door. “May I get the door for you?”  


Scarlet pursed her lips. “Then what’s the rush?” She cooed, gracefully ignoring his question. She stepped towards him and Tag felt his heart rate skyrocket. It was only years of practice in schooling his expression and emotions that kept him from bolting. Though he did dig his teeth into the smallest bit of skin on the inside of his lip.  


‘Come on,’ he thought to himself. ‘Pull it together. Act like the confident SOLDIER you should be.’  


Scarlet didn’t wait for an answer, just reached out and grabbed his jaw in her fingers. Her nails were painted the same shade of red as her lipstick. She turned his head one way, then the other, then sighed. “Heidegger never sends me the pretty ones,” she pouted. She didn’t let go.  


Tag would have blushed at the comment if he wasn’t so terrified. Scarlet could end him with a word, both his career and his life. He kept his breathing even, wrapping a false sense of security and assuredness around him like a blanket. He spoke without thinking. “He doesn’t, Ma’am? That sounds like a shame.”  


“It is, isn't it?” Scarlet sighed softly. “Well, I’ll be in Midgar for a few days, to get this whole mess with Rufus sorted out.” Her lips pulled into a wider smile as she fluttered her eyelashes in a way that was probably supposed to be seductive. “At least I’ll get to see all the SOLDIERs he’s hiding from me. He’s such a selfish man.” She finally let go of his jaw, but dropped her hand so her fingers brushed his collarbone. Tag felt his innermost mind mentally screaming, muffled only by the layers he’d wrapped it in.  


“Yes Ma’am.” He bobbed his head and shuffled one boot a quarter of a step back. “As much as I would like to stay here, Ma’am, I’m afraid I have some important papers to deliver.” He held up the manila folder with the leave forms and dipped his head in a small apology.  


“Important papers?” She asked. “Heidegger is really making you run errands this late?” She clicked her tongue, glaring at the door. “Rat bastard. They’re for the Turks, I suppose.”  


Tag ducked his head a little in a non-answer answer. She huffed irritably. “He has too many branches. Maybe I should talk Rufus into having some transferred to me....” She trailed off, clearly talking to herself now more than Tag. “SOLDIERs should fall under weapons development anyways....”  


Tag took a short step back. “I should go now. Good night Ma’am.” She hummed and waved her hand, turning fully towards the door. Tag pressed the button to open the fancy office doors as he turned, walking quickly down the hallway. He forced himself not to run.  


He was almost home free, almost free to escape into the night. He turned the corner and slipped down a worker’s hallway. It was cluttered in boxes, for some reason or another. He slipped his way between the boxes, which would probably become a maze soon. The boxes were stacked high, some stacks almost to the ceiling.  


Someone clicked their tongue above him, nearly making Tag jump. He looked up instead and felt his insides wither as he recognized the blue suit. “Heya errand boy,” a red headed Turk called down at him from his perch on a shorter stack of boxes. He shifted so one of his legs dangled over the side, stretching out like a cat in sunlight.  


“Good evening, Sir,” Tag responded, wondering what he’d done to piss off the god of luck, whoever that was.  


“Oh, it’s ‘sir’ now is it?” The Turk, Tag didn’t think he’d ever learned his name, leaned down and held out his hand. “Well, let’s see these important papers for the Turks, then.”  


Tag did his best not to visibly pale. How was it that Turks were always listening at the worst times? It was like they all had a sixth sense or something. Well, maybe they did. They were Turks. “I... never said they were for the Turks.”  


“Yeah, well, you didn’t say they weren’t either. So gimme!” He made grabby motions towards the folder. Tag reluctantly handed it over, hoping this wouldn’t take long.  


The Turk scanned over the leave request forms with a forced interested look. “Aaah... I see. Very ‘important’. Hell of a time for leave though....”  


“One of the troopers got a letter about increased fiend-”  


“I can read it,” the Turk interrupted.  


Tag shut his mouth.  


The Turk eventually closed the folder and looked back at Tag. “You know an off the book ‘mission’ like this won’t have any back up if anything goes wrong.”  


“I know,” Tag said softly.  


“No mission briefing. No extraction for injured. No reinforcements on the off chance you do find a Behemoth. You’re on your own.”  


“If I do find a Behemoth,” he said, focusing on the easiest one, “I’ll have half a dozen troopers with me, and whoever can fight in town. Those aren’t bad odds.” They kinda were, especially if it was strong.  


The Turk huffed, but gave a shrug. “Whatever.” He turned away like the conversation was over. Tag extended his hand to take the folder back. The Turk looked back at him. “What?”  


“My... papers, Sir?”  


The Turk blinked, then looked down at the folder like he’d forgotten he was still holding them. “Ah. Right.” He handed them back.  


As the red-haired Turk leaned down, the long ponytail slipping over his shoulder, Tag noticed the dark shadows under his eyes, like he hadn’t slept at all in the past few days. He hesitated long enough for the Turk to notice that he was.  


“What?” The Turk asked indignantly.  


“Uh- you look... a bit tired, Sir.”  


“Hah?” The Turk narrowed his eyes.  


Tag decided ending this whole thing before he could shove his foot even further into his mouth was the best option. “Ah- Don’t work too hard,” he said hurriedly. He dipped his head a little, then rushed off, scurrying away into the maze of boxes. He felt like the Turk’s eyes stayed on him until he slipped into his dorm in the SOLDIER barracks. He pressed his back against the door and let himself breath again.  


The lights were off in the room and one of the four beds was occupied. Teal was curled up under his sheets, somehow forming a giant lump that was bigger than he normally was.  


Tag stepped quietly into the room, doing his best not to disturb him. It was hard with the SOLDIER enhancements, but they all tried to be considerate of each other.  


Tag slipped around the room to his bed, kneeling down next to his own dresser. In the bottom most drawer he kept his night clothes, the pair of fuzzy lounge pants Sparrow had gotten him only mostly as a joke, his black leather coat, courtesy of Aiji deciding he needed one, and the few personal effects he’d brought with him.  


They were what was left of his life before Shinra. As he pulled his coat out of the drawer, he knew he couldn’t leave them, even for a little while. His mother’s necklace, a thick leather cord with a tree shaped charm with colorful stones woven into its roots, he tucked inside his father’s scarf, made of warm red fabric. He wound the scarf into a ball and slipped it deep into his pocket.  


A soft sound came from the occupied bed. “Whoz dare?” Teal’s words came out slurred, but they’d been roommates long enough for Tag to know that was from sleep and not alcohol. His blanket moved in a way that only the mako glow of one eye was visible.  


Tag answered in a whisper, without much thought. “Just me,” he said. His voice came out as someone else’s, an odd talent he’d discovered by accident. Tag had found that he could mimic just about any voice, from the timber to the diction. His voice had sounded like one of their other roommate’s, Johan’s. He was supposed to be on duty in the slums, but if Teal noticed the discrepancy in timing, that wasn’t what he mentioned.  


“Wut you doin’ in Tag’z stuff?” He pushes himself up on his arm, then blinked blankly. “Oh. Tag....”  


Tag offered a stiff smile, then turned back to his stuff. He pulled out his spare army knife and the bottle of blade cleaner. He tucked the cleaner into one of his other pockets and strapped the knife to his belt, at the small of his back.  


“Why’re you upset?” Teal mumbled, sounding a little more awake. He was sitting up now, stretching.  


“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you,” Tag apologized without turning around. He switched out his SOLDIER issued combat boots for his personal ones. The only difference between them was that one of them wouldn’t get him in trouble for ruining outside a mission.  


“‘S all good. Had my alarm set for....” A brief, blinding light illuminated the room. “Ugh- for... half an hour.” Teal set his PHS back on the dresser next to his bed. “So, why’re you upset?”  


“What makes you think I’m upset?”  


“You always do that mimic thing when you’re upset.” Teal yawned hugely, slipping out of bed to start his routine of stretches. His back cracked as he stretched his arms above his head. “Can’t hide it from me.” He folded over to press his face against his knees.  


“Don’t do it on purpose...,” Tag grumbled. He deliberately did not look at his roommate as he stretched, clad in his briefs and nothing else. There was a long moment of silence as Teal waited patiently for Tag to break it first. “It- It’s been a night,” he finally sighed, the mental image of Cloud on the TV, and the sudden excitement of his friends flashed through his mind painfully.  


“Oh yeah?”  


“I’m heading out on leave for a couple months, had to sweet talk Heidegger into it.”  


“I’ll bet.”  


“Then immediately after, ran into Scarlet, in one of her moods.”  


“Ouch.”  


“Then walked straight into a Turk, but managed to skirt away before I got hassled too much.”  


“Which Turk?”  


“Red hair in a ponytail?”  


“Reno,” Teal supplied with a small, resigned sigh. “That’s not too bad. He likes you.”  


“He does?” Tag blinked. He turned to look at Teal over his shoulder, ready to ask why- He immediately regretted turning around. Teal had sauntered closer, so the moment Tag turned his head, he got an eyeful of the other man’s navel and the waistline of his briefs. Tag snapped his head back around. He cleared his throat, mentally scrambling for a topic change. He found one and sank his teeth into it.  


“So, I’ll be gone for a while, two months.”  


“That’s a long time,” Teal commented, sitting down on the edge of Tag’s bed. “Especially for you.” Tag glanced up at him, careful to only look him in the face. Teal gave a one-shouldered shrug. “You don’t get missions out of the city all that much. Actually... when was the last time you left Midgar...?”  


Tag looked back at his dresser and gave a halfhearted shrug. “Been a while....”  


“Just before you made second, right? That mission with those troopers you hang with.”  


“Yeah.”  


Teal leaned down so his face was in Tag’s line of sight. His eyes were naturally green, though they’d been darker before. The glow of the Mako behind the colored iris of them made them glow an unnatural shade of sea-foam green.  


“Are you gonna be okay?”  


Tag nodded, swallowing the lump that formed in his throat. When he spoke again, it was with a mumbled melancholy tone. “I’m just not very good at field missions. But I’m SOLDIER, so I have some use. I am the tower’s ‘heavy duty errand boy’ after all.”  


“Yeah, so you’ve said.” Teal frowned. “But... are there fiends where you’re going?”  


Tag gave a one-shouldered shrug, mirroring the one Teal had given earlier. “There’s fiends in Midgar.”  


“Not that kind.”  


“I’ll have the troopers with me.”  


“Yeah....” Teal murmured. “Hey, send me photos of where you go, okay? You can tell me the stories when you get back.”  


Tag smiled at him, carefully fixing the blanket of confidence around him. “Sure. When I get back.” He stood up, toeing the drawer closed. “Don’t let Johan go through my stuff.”  


Teal gave a two-fingered salute. “Yessir!”  


~  


Tag smiled apologetically at the secretary on shift. “Sorry to make you work.”  


She waved her hand dismissively, leaning through the folder. She bent down and started to scan and make copies of each of them. “No problem at all, dear. I wasn’t doing anything anyways. I’m not allowed to sleep on the job, so some work is better than staring at the door for six hours.” She stifled a yawn. “Almost done though. The sun’ll be up soon, so morning shift won’t be long.”  


Tag nodded and hummed in affirmation. He folded his arms behind his back and waited patiently.  


The secretary, her name tag read ‘Gracelyn’, dropped the pile of copies on the desktop a minute later. “Here you go, soldier. Don’t goof off too much now.” She flashed him a grin and a wink.  


Tag’s lips pulled into an easy grin. “No promises.” Gracelyn laughed as he took the papers and left.  


~  


Tag was the last person to get to the station, of course. The others were waiting for him by the compartment car. There was a scattering of duffel bags slung over shoulders or sitting next to feet. Tag briefly wondered if he was supposed to bring a bag too. It had completely slipped his mind in his room, with everything that had been ricocheting around in his head, but it was too late now. Reed’s head jerked and he grinned when he saw Tag walking up. “Hey there stranger.”  


Tag lifted the papers wearily, then slapped them into Randy’s outstretched hands, an exasperated look on his face. “I have never... had to kiss so much ass in my life....” He felt like keeling over and taking a week-long nap. He didn’t quite, but he did put his hands on his knees though, taking deep breaths as he tried to settle his poor frayed nerves.  


Aiji’s eyebrow quirked up almost to his hairline. “You mean Heidegger’s or...?”  


Tag sighed as he straightened up, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Heidegger, Scarlet, and Turk Reno, in quick succession. Then placating my roommate after waking him up.” Tag sighed as someone grabbed the top edge of his glove and tugged him towards the train. 

“Pretty sure today took a decade off my life.”  


Randy held up the leave papers, signed and filled out with partial truths. “Maybe a relaxing trip to Kalm for two months of fiend hunts and family will help?”  


Sparrow took the papers from him. “Not with Reed’s family, if he’s any example for the rest of them!”  


“Hey!”  


Tag blinked and suddenly they were in a train compartment. It looked like a booth, with a fold-out table in the center. He was halfway slumped over the table with his head in his arms and one shoulder pressed tight against the window of the compartment.  


The train was just starting to pull out of the station, the slightly green tinted smoke drifting past overhead. The train would take them to Kalm, though it’d take most of the day. It was one of the few country running trains, though it usually hauled more supplies than passengers. 

Tag sleepily lifted his head, looking around the compartment. For a moment he thought they were in some restaurant. Ward sat across from him, somehow having tucked his big body into the corner even more than Tag had. Randy was slumped half on top of him, already conked out and snoring. Sparrow was twisted around and kneeling on his seat, digging through the duffel bag above his head. 

Aiji sat next to Tag, tapping away at his PHS. He glanced up and gave Tag a small smile before looking back down. Reed sat closest to the door of the compartment, looking out the window nervously. Tag blinked at all of them tiredly, then laid his head back in his arms. The sound of the train rolling out of Midgar rumbled through his arms. Before too long, Tag slipped into a much-needed nap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Rubs hands together* ehehhehheh :} It’s all coming together.... or maybe not yet.
> 
> I have already seeded some plot lines I’m very excited about! Lemme know if you think you see one~ >w> /\
> 
> Thank you for reading so far! Let me know what you think! This is my first Final Fantasy Fic (that I’ve gotten enough to publish) that I’ve published, so hopefully it turned out noice. ^w^


	2. Train to Kalm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went back and edited some parts of the last chapter, nothin major, but a few little edits and added a couple lines.
> 
> There will be no Remake spoilers in this chapter. (I haven't played it yet and it's killing meeeee! ;A;)

The first time Tag left Midgar was his first official mission as SOLDIER. There were training missions to be sure, but all of those were small fiend runs in the city, or else in the virtual training rooms. But this mission was labeled as his first. 

Early in the afternoon about a dozen newly certified SOLDIERs had been packed into a helicopter that was really a bit too small for all of them. It was made to carry a small team of people, with benches built into either side. There were two seconds and allegedly a first stuffed in there too. But Tag couldn’t see either the black or the purple of their uniforms through the blob of third blue. 

Tag was squashed up against the back of the chopper. The back was actually a door, which would open up and let them out when they landed. There was a particularly irritating SOLDIER sitting next to him, spreading his legs about as wide as he probably could. He was also using the back of the bench as arm rests, forcing Tag to dodge his meaty hand by leaning as far away as physically possible, his shoulder pressing against the back. 

After what felt like hours, but was probably less than two, someone near the front of the helicopter stood up, marching towards the back. Tag looked up at the SOLDIER in the black uniform suddenly standing in front of him. The sword strapped to his back nearly touched the back wall. 

“Alright people, listen up!” The walker said in a voice that made every eye snap towards him. Tag blinked up him from under his helmet. 

He looked like a southerner, with a darker complexion and a slight accent. His black hair was long with most of it slicked back, though a stray lock of it dangled in his face. He stood with confidence, but seemed less like an imposing figure and more like a stable handhold to cling to. As his eyes raked across the cramped helicopter space, glowing in the dark space, he nodded to himself, a grin splitting across his face. 

Suddenly the space seemed a lot brighter. 

“Alright! Nice to meet you all. I’m Zack Fair and I’ll be your first-class nanny for today.” 

Tag tilted his head as he looked up at the first. He seemed friendly, way different from the stories he’d heard about the other firsts. Fair seemed like someone you could really talk to, and like he’d really listen. Tag was a little surprised that he got that impression so quickly and easily. He wasn’t usually one to trust so quickly, but this guy... he was special. 

“So, we’re gonna set down pretty soon. We’ll split into three groups and start fanning out. Our mission, this is an easy one now, find a couple fiends and kill ‘em.” He gave a full body shrug, cocking his head to the side. “They don’t get much simpler than this, folks.” 

There came a grunt of agreement from one of the seconds. 

“But I like to start you new Thirds off with something fun.” Fair got a mischievous look in his eyes, though he mostly covered it by rolling his shoulders. “Anyone who wants to try a drop can follow after me. We’re a bit lower than a typical SOLDIER drop, so this is your one and only chance for a practice one!” 

He jerked his arm above his head and gave a sign to the pilot. Suddenly, the back of the chopper started opening, letting the light flood in. Tag felt the breath leave his lungs with the flood of wind that swept out of the chopper. He felt the wind tug as his clothes, almost urging him to follow. He blinked the spots out of his eyes to see the First step back until only half of his boots were still on the floor, his heals hanging dangerously over open air. 

Fair flashed a cheeky grin and a cocky wink at the horrified looking thirds, then back flipped out of the chopper. There was a surge of movement as the rest of the chopper rushed to stare over the edge. 

They were dizzyingly high in the air, the wind from the chopper's rotors not even disturbing the trees so far, far below them. Tag felt his mouth go dry as he watched First Class Fair fell down so fast. He saw the First spread his arms and legs out, catching himself on the wind, then flip over to land gracefully on the ground. 

The crowd of Thirds eased forwards, every one of them trying to see if Fair was still alive or not. Tag, small and already perched on the very edge of the chopper, felt something against his back, push just a little too hard. His boot slipped off the edge of the chopper, taking the rest of him with it. 

Tag felt his jaw clench with fear as the wind whipped past the sides of his helmet. He flailed wildly as he spiraled downwards, clawing at the air like he could get a grip on it. This would be an absolutely pathetic way to die. 

At least some part of his brain must not have been screaming in terror, because his arms and legs eventually snapped themselves straight out, catching the wind just enough to slow him down. 

Tag didn't remember the impact, not later that day or on any afterwards. He just remembered adjusting his body to land the way he thought he’d seen Fair land a minute earlier and praying to any god that would listen that his legs wouldn’t snap like stale pretzel sticks.

Then he was suddenly on solid ground, standing in a low crouch, legs aching and the rest of him shaking from a cocktail of one-part adrenaline, one-part fear, and one-part "Holy shit I can't believe I survived that." He stared blankly ahead of him, not daring to move, barely daring to breathe. 

A friendly face appeared in front of him, First Class Fair grinning with something almost pride gleaming in his eyes. Or maybe that was the mako. 

“Nice one, SOLDIER! I honestly wasn’t expecting anyone to jump after me.”

“D-n’t….” Tag breathed. He pitched over backwards and landed hard on his backside. “Didn’t… jump.” Fair tilted his head curiously. “Fell… out. Fell out.” Tag lost the last of his ability to stay upright and flopped on his back, his arms and legs splayed like a starfish. He stared blankly at the sky, waiting for his brain to catch up with the rest of his body. 

Fair laughed, leaning down to pat him on the shoulder. “Well, good news, next time won’t be nearly that bad.” 

Tag was pretty sure he made the same sound as a dying malboro. 

Fair chuckled again, tilting his entire upper body backwards to look up at the slowly receding chopper. “Well, looks like it’s just us man. The others are heading over to the landing field.”

Tag lifted his head, watching the chopper disappear beyond the tree line. Wasn’t this the landing field…?

Fair looked down at him, cocking one eyebrow up. “There’s actually a smaller mission I’m doing too. I didn’t think many, if any, of you were gonna be down here with me, so….” He shrugged one shoulder. “Guess you get some extra practice SOLDIER.” He extended his hand towards Tag.

Tag stared at his hand for a moment, then carefully took it. SOLDIER Fair pulled him to his feet and Tag was eternally grateful that he wasn’t one to get nauseous. Getting sick all over the First Class was not the impression he wanted to make. 

Once Tag was steady on his feet, First Class Fair jerked his head and started walking in the direction the chopper had flown. He pulled out his PHS and started punching buttons. Tag followed dutifully behind him. 

Fair must have had an extra set of eyes somewhere, because he wove between the trees like he wasn’t staring down at his PHS. Tag was having a hard-enough time just trying not to trip over roots and undergrowth or smack himself in the face with branches. He guessed that was just the difference between a First Class and a rookie Third. 

“Alright!” Fair declared after a minute, “Took me a bit to find the email, but I got it now.” He flashed a grin over his shoulder. Then, for just a flash, a strange look crossed his face. “I… did ask your name, right?”

Tag silently shook his head.

“Damn.” Fair huffed irritably through his nose. “Well, what’s your name then SOLDIER?”

“Blacke, sir.”

Fair’s lips quirked up slightly. “You don’t gotta ‘sir’ me, Blacke. I’m not Sephiroth.” 

Tag felt the blush creeping on to his face and tried to wrangle it back down. He grabbed it by the neck and threw it over his shoulder, but it landed on its feet instead of its head and got the upper hand. He dipped his head in a small non-answer. 

Fair turned his head and sidestepped a tree trunk. He blinked down at the phone in his hand, then squinted at it. “Right… Right! The mission. Apparently…,” he cleared his throat, “Additional fiend sightings to the south-east of previous mission assignment. Reports unclear. Expect flying enemy.” He snapped his PHS shut, looking back at Tag again. “So it’s probably a Bizarre Bug or a Fly Eye of some kind, maybe a Bomb if we’re lucky. There really aren’t many big flying things this side of Junon.” 

“Right….” Tag muttered. He was way out of his depth here. He had no idea what he was supposed to do. But, if they were sending Fair on this mission alone in the first place, Tag probably wouldn’t have to do anything. 

Well, hindsight is…. 

Tag didn’t see it coming. Apparently Fair didn’t either. One moment he was walking a few paces in front of Tag, and the next he was gone in a blur of feathers. Tag blinked at the empty space for an embarrassingly long moment of stunned silence before he snapped out of it when he heard an inhuman shriek. He snapped his head to the side and saw a griffon pinning Fair to the ground. Fair was barely holding it away by the neck, its snapping beak much too close to his face for comfort. Fair was pinned, Tag realized. His sword was on his back, pinned beneath him.

 _“He can’t draw his sword…!”_

Tag felt his hand close around the sword strapped to his own back, drawing it and effectively embedding it into a branch above his head. Tag heard screaming in his ears, coming from inside his own head. He jerked on the sword, trying to yank it free, but it stuck fast. The griffon screeched again, nearly taking a chunk off the tip of Fair’s nose. 

No time for swords now. 

Tag took a running start and rammed his shoulder against the griffon’s hip. It sidestepped at little, but didn’t move off of Fair. Tag grabbed the animal’s lashing tail and sprinted away from Fair as hard as he could. The tail felt like rope under his gloves, especially when it snapped taught, it felt like a game of tug-of-war. 

This time the griffon shrieked and whirled around, leaping off of Fair and swiping at Tag’s back. The tail went slack as it leapt at him, so Tag gained a bit more distance, just enough for the griffon to miss him. The tail went taught again, snapping like rope. The griffon whipped around the other way and tried to swipe at him from that side, only for the tail to go slack enough for Tag to slip out of range. The griffon spun back, trying the first side again, only to fall dead under Fair’s sword before it could finish the turn.

Tag heard a relieved sigh behind him, and dared to look over his shoulder. He was First Class Fair pull his buster blade out of the griffon’s face. Fair’s eyes flickered up to him, a grin slowly spreading across his lips. “Clever, Blacke.” Fair glanced to where Tag’s sword was hanging from a tree branch like a dangly earring. “Swordsmanship could use some work, but under pressure problem-solving looks pretty good.” 

Tag flushed, partly from embarrassment and partly from the compliment. “Thank you, sir….” He started a little. “Um… right…. Yeah, thank you….” 

_“Sir,”_ he mentally added. 

Fair beamed at him, clapping him on the shoulder. “You are very welcome. And thank you for saving my, uh….” He glanced down at the tail still in Tag’s hands, “my tail?” He grinned sheepishly, his shoulders shaking from a barely contained laugh. “Sorry, can’t help it.”

Tag felt his lips twitch up into a small smile. “It’s alright,” 

_“Sir.”_

“It’s… well, I thought it was funny….”

Fair beamed at him. “I knew I liked you!”

Tag felt himself flush darkly. He swallowed whatever stupid reply was attempting to crawl out his throat. He shifted his weight from foot to foot as Fair made his way towards Tag’s sword. 

“Man, you really got it in there,” he laughed. He reached up and grabbed the hilt, wiggling and puling it to try to dislodge it. “Ah, poor tree. We might have to cut it out.” Fair tilted his head, then hopped off the ground. Tag blinked in mild amazement as Fair essentially did a one-handed chin up while hanging off his sword. Fair jerked himself up and down a few times, then yanked on it hard. The sword dislodged from the tree. Fair’s feet hit the ground as he let out a satisfied cackle. 

Fair turned around, tilting his head as he looked Tag up and down. His smile stretched across his lips as he stepped forward, holding the hilt out to Tag. “Do you have dreams, Blacke?”

“Dreams?” Tag blinked, tilting his head.

“Yeah, dreams. Do you have any?”

Tag shook his head silently, gingerly taking his sword from the First. It hung loosely at his side.

Fair pursed his lips, staring vaguely at Tag’s sword, with a far away look in his eye. “Well, I hope you find some. Dreams and honor…,” Fair started. His lips quirked up at the corners. “No matter what happens, embrace your dreams, and protect your honor as SOLDIER.” Fair raised his eyes, the mako shining brightly as the determination in them gleamed. “You gotta have dreams, Blacke, they’re… they’re important.”

Tag stared up at him for a long moment, then dipped his head slightly. “Yes sir.”

“Hey!” Fair protested with a laugh, “Don’t call me ‘sir’!” 

~

Jamie ‘Sparrow’ Hawk shifted in his seat, drumming his fingers anxiously against his thigh. The train rattled away from Midgar, though the further away they got, the more anxious he felt. 

“So...,” he muttered, looking down at Tag, solidly conked out over the compartment’s table, resisting the urge to reach across the table and fix the hair that had fallen over his eyes. “We all know we’re definitely gonna get super in trouble for this right? As in treason trouble.” 

Randy pressed his lips together, slumping in his seat. “Yeah... yeah.” The others nodded grimly. 

“But it’s worth it, right?” Reed said, looking around the compartment. “For Cloud.” 

“We’re throwing our whole lives away to chase a ghost,” Aiji muttered, twisting his earring between his fingers. “Will he even be happy to see us?” 

Sparrow swallowed around the knot that was forming in his throat. “Of course he will! There just has to be some reason why he hasn’t-“ 

“Called, written, texted, or contacted us in anyway?” Reed frowned, shrinking into his jacket. “Maybe he... really hates Shinra....” 

“And us by proxy?” Randy muttered, “I mean, sure he was kinda an ass, we all kinda were. But I don’t think he hated us, or that he ever could.” 

“But he was with Avalanche. He blew up the reactors and assassinated the president. Do you know if he was sure any of us weren’t in the reactors? Or the tower? So, did he not care if we died?”

Sparrow chewed the inside of his lip, then forced a cheery grin. “You’re thinking about it way too much! Why try to find the reasons and worry about the what if’s when we’re gonna just ask him?” 

“Still,” Aiji hummed, “It’s not guaranteed that he’ll be happy to see us.”

Sparrow felt himself wince and his smile tighten into something more strained. “Well....” 

“No man left behind,” Ward rumbled, not opening his eyes. “Whether we are welcome or not, we will try.” Gods, he was so cool. 

Randy and Aiji were nodding in agreement, Aiji looking a little deflated. “But what about afterwards?” Aiji murmured, “We are still associating with known terrorists, and lying on official documents about it. So Shinra will not be happy with us, to say the least.” 

“We’ll figure that out after we find Cloud,” Randy decided. “What we do from there will be different depending on what Cloud says.”

Aiji nodded slightly, chewing on his lip and looking out the window. He glanced down at Tag’s face, half buried in his arms, and brushed the hair out of his eyes. “We’re dragging Tag down with us too….”

“It’s a little late for cold feet…,” Reed sighed as he tilted his head back until it hit the wall of the compartment. Suddenly, he stilled, eyes going wide. “Someone checked for bugs right?” 

There was a moment of freezing silence, the cold fingers of panic curling up Sparrow’s spine. Were there bugs? Were the Turks listening to their conversation? It was definitely incriminating, hell it was practically a confession. Would there be Turks waiting for them at Kalm? Would they be chased themselves? Sparrow felt his fingers curl until his knuckles hurt, his heart pounding against his ribcage.

“I did,” Ward hummed. “The room was clear.” 

There was an audible release of tension. Sparrow closed his eyes and breathed out a long breath, feeling the tension leave him. Reed slumped over the table. “Thank the gods. I don’t care which one.” 

“Ward.” Randy sighed, twisting his arm to pat Ward’s shoulder. “Thank the great god Ward. Good man.” 

Ward snorted through his nose and relaxed against the wall again, his eyes sliding shut. The compartment was quiet for a long time, everyone suddenly too tired for idle chat, or even strategic planning. 

Sparrow wasn’t sure how long it had been before he heard Reed start to snore, a low sound that sounded like a muffled chainsaw. He cracked an eye open and saw him leaning against his corner, head tilted back and mouth open towards the ceiling. 

Aiji had his headphones plugged into his PHS, probably drowning out the sound for his own sanity, and typing, probably on one of his forums. Sparrow glanced towards the other two, seeing Ward sleeping with his chin tucked into his scarf, all the way up to his nose, and Randy half slumped against him, heavy lidded eyes scanning the pages of his book in a way that indicated he wasn’t actually reading it. 

Randy glanced up at him and gave a loopy smile, then shut his eyes and promptly passed out. Sparrow raised an eyebrow at Aiji, who didn’t see him. He leaned across the table and tapped his wrist twice. Aiji looked up, looking a bit off put. He pulled one of his headphone muffs off his ear. 

“Are we on lookout shifts or something?” Sparrow asked him, jabbing a thumb towards Randy. “Cuz he conked out as soon as I opened my eyes.”

“You weren’t asleep?” Aiji hummed, both eyebrows raised. 

“Uh… I didn’t think I was.”

Aiji shrugged. “We thought it would be better if someone was awake at all times, not for… Shinra, not yet. But to guard against other passengers or something.” He pressed his lips together, then shrugged again. “I wasn’t going to sleep anyways. I was supposed to have the midnight shift at Reactor Five today, but… and, _yeah_ ,” he mumbled, slipping into Wutian. 

Sparrow felt his blood run cold. How close it had been… that Aiji would have been right in there, in the reactor…. If Avalanche had delayed by just a couple days… his friend would be gone. Sparrow tried to breath normally, but his throat suddenly felt raw and tight. If he felt this bad, how messed up was Aiji? If Aiji had been in there… what would they have done about Cloud? 

Sparrow shook his head, biting his bottom lip so hard he tasted blood. He forced a wobblily, unconvincing smile when he noticed Aiji still looking at him. He pressed his lips together to stop them from quivering and reached across the table, taking Aiji’s free hand in his own, holding it tightly. Aiji squeezed back, his hand shaking against Sparrow’s. 

Sparrow closed his eyes and leaned forward, laying his forehead against Aiji’s hand. It was far from comfortable, the edge of the table dug painfully under his bottom ribs, but Aiji’s hand was slowly losing that shiver, so he forced himself to stay still until Aiji gently tugged his hand away.

There was a long moment of silence, where Aiji slipped back into his music and the snoring had quieted to a soft huff and puff, and the sound of the train clickity-clacking over the rails filled the compartment like a steady pressure. 

Sparrow enjoyed the quiet moment, despite what the others thought. He liked the stagnation of a moment that seemed to last forever, like he might be trapped in just that moment until he turned to dust. He felt his breathing deepen, then felt his shoulders relaxing. If he could just stay in this moment forever, then nothing bad would happen. If the rest of eternity was only soft huff and puff snores, the occasional murmur or shift of warm bodies, and the pressure of the train rumbling through an endless series of clickity-clack, then he could be content with that. 

Sparrow wasn’t asleep, not really. He was still awake, thinking, and staring out the window. But he wasn’t awake, not really. 

“Mmmnnn….”

Sparrow blinked, and the illusion was shattered. 

Tag shifted, slowly stretching his arms out across the table and raising his head. He blinked blearily, then flexed his fingers like a cat flexed its claws. Sparrow felt his lips quirk up at that comparison. “Heya Tag. Have a nice nap?”

Tag looked around the compartment until his gaze settled on Sparrow. His eyes, or rather, the mako in his eyes, glowed especially bright against the still dark sky of the slowly dawning morning. “Kalm?”

“Yep! Just a couple more hours and we’ll get there around nine.”

Tag nodded his head, eyebrows pinching together. He pinched the bridge of his nose, groaning softly as he got his mind working again. “Something, something… little lost trooper?”

“Got it in one. You want coffee or something?”

Tag sat back in his seat, arching his back to snap some cricks out of his spine. “Mmm… walk maybe… don’ like coffee….”

“Figurative coffee, I meant. A walk is good.”

Aiji stretched his arms out in front of him, like Tag stretching had reminded him that he should as well. He rolled his shoulders and pulled his headphones down to his neck. “I heard ‘coffee’.” 

“How did you even hear that…?” Sparrow muttered.

“We were drinking last night and I haven’t slept. I have about an hour before the hangover kicks in and believe me, I will aim all the crabbiness at you.” He pointed at Sparrow accusingly.

“Why me?” 

“You challenged me, birdbrain.”

“That’s offensive.”

“ _Bite me_.”

“ _Noisy_....” Tag rumbled in a voice much deeper than his own.

Sparrow closed his mouth. He had been planning to shoot something back in Wutian, purposefully mispronounced this time, just to annoy Aiji, but the undertones of a headache he heard in Tag’s voice made him swallow the impulse. “You didn’t even drink,” he protested with a soft laugh, keeping his voice quiet.

“Get me coffee,” Aiji demanded, also speaking quieter now. He did something underneath the table that unlocked it. He folded it against the wall and settled back into his seat. “How I like it,” he added for good measure. 

Sparrow rolled his eyes and stood up, stepping over Reed’s legs and sliding the compartment door open. He reached his hand back towards Tag to help him step over the other’s legs too. 

Tag’s hand was warm, really warm, even through his glove. Sparrow held on to it tight enough to wrinkle the leather as he carried him across their companion’s legs and out of the compartment. 

Tag stood still for a moment in the hall of the train car. He looked strangely surreal, under the dim yellow lights his hair and eyes took on a strange sheen. He blinked, shaking himself out of whatever space his mind had drifted off into, and shrugged the leather jacket off his shoulders. He leaned back into the compartment to offer it to Aiji. 

“Hold… _please_ ,” he mumbled. Aiji nodded and took it from him.

Sparrow looked Tag up and down as he silently closed the door again. He hadn’t noticed before, but Tag was wearing his SOLDIER uniform still, though he didn’t look completely like a SOLDIER, not with the sheer black sleeves of his undershirt and minus his helmet and shoulder armor and the stomach guard. But with the soft glow of his eyes, it didn’t take much to figure him out. 

“We need to get you some shades or something,” Sparrow mumbled, mostly to himself.

Tag cocked his head, making a soft crooning sound. Sparrow patted his head, watching Tag’s eyelids droop. “Come on, let’s get us all some coffee. Maybe they have juice or tea too. Ward would prefer the juice.” 

Tag nodded and fell into step a little behind Sparrow. The hallway of the train car was a little too narrow to walk side by side, even though both of them were rather slight. 

“I’ve always wanted to go to Kalm,” Sparrow confessed, keeping his voice low as they passed other compartments. Some had lights on already, or still, and most had their curtains drawn. “It’s one of the big cities, yeah? And the town I’m from is so small. Hell, Gongaga is bigger than Aggermas, and they’re a tiny backwater town hardly anybody’s heard about, let alone anyone on the East continent.”

Tag hummed and nodded a little. 

“I’d bet if it hadn’t been for First Class Fair, exactly nobody this side of Junon would even know about Gongaga.” He gave a soft huffy laugh through his nose. “Tiny backwater towns all around, you, me and First Class Fair.”

“If you’re not from Midgar, Kalm, Junon, or Mideel, your town is small,” Tag snickered quietly. Sparrow glanced back at him, seeing a tired smile slowly start to cross his face.

“Geez, you’re such a dog,” he teased, “A little ol’ walk’s all it takes to make you feel better.”

“Not a…,” Tag yawned hugely, “dog…. Just not a morning person.”

“A non-morning person who doesn’t drink coffee,” Sparrow chuckled, shaking his head, “guess gold Chocobo really do exist.” Sparrow caught sight of Tag rolling his eyes. “Well you are,” he reached behind him and ruffled Tag’s hair, “Fuzzy.” 

Tag huffed and jerked his head back and upwards, only barely trying to dislodge Sparrow’s hand. Sparrow dropped his hand anyways as he turned around and kept on down the train car. 

“It doesn’t work…,” Tag sighed, sounding more awake now.

“What doesn’t?”

“Coffee. It doesn’t work. It won’t have enough of an effect unless I super-size dose it. But coffee doesn’t taste good enough to be worth it….”

“Same as alcohol, yeah?”

Tag nodded. Sparrow shrugged sympathetically. 

They reached the end on their car and Sparrow heaved the heavy door open so they could cross into the next one. Tag reached out and grabbed the door, holding it open easily. Sparrow huffed his thanks and stepped into the small hallway room that connected the train cars. Before he could open the other door, Tag reached past him and pushed it open.

“I could get it…,” Sparrow protested. “I’m scrawny not impotent.” Tag merely hummed non-committedly in response. 

As Sparrow raised his eyes to look at the entirety of the dining car, he felt like he’d been slapped across the face by Titan himself. Scattered around the car, along with half a dozen passengers and staff kneeling on the floor, were four people wearing black masks and holding some very scary looking guns. For one horrified moment, he thought it was Cloud’s group, but after a quick sweep and headcount, he determined that no, they probably weren’t with Cloud. He’d like to think that Cloud wouldn’t associate with people who were pointing very high caliber guns at a mother holding her infant against her chest. 

The masked armed people stared silently at Sparrow and Tag. Sparrow felt the blood rushing away from his face as his heart started hammering against the inside of his ribs. Tag made a small sound in his throat. Several of the masked people raised their weapons towards them. 

“Get in here! Shut the door!” One of the masked people, a large man with a red splatter pattern across his mask. Sparrow hopefully thought it was just the pattern of the mask, and not actually blood. 

Sparrow slowly raised his hands. What else could he do? He was unarmed. They had hostages. The rest of his team were half a car away, most of them sleeping soundly. Sparrow took a small, shuffling step forward. He was scared. He was terrified. 

Something touched his back, making him flinch. Sparrow looked over his shoulder. Tag smiled softly. The gentle glow of the mako behind his eyes felt comforting. Sparrow felt the ball of tension in his chest unravel, just a little bit. It was going to be okay. Just like their disastrous mess of a mission before, it was going to end okay. 

Tag carefully stepped around Sparrow, letting the door swing shut behind him. He leveled a freezing cold stare at the man in the red splattered mask, shifting his feet apart and lowering his center of mass deep into his hips. Sparrow swallowed as he recognized it as a ready position. He’d seen SOLDIERs take it plenty of times. Was Tag seriously planning on fighting them? Sparrow clenched his jaw tight to stop his teeth from chattering. Every time he’d faced danger before, he’d had his team at his back. Now, he was the only one at Tag’s back. That thought scared him more than the guns. 

The masked people raised their guns, aiming them at Tag more than Sparrow. The man in the red splattered mask raised a pistol towards Tag’s face. “Both of you, on your knees!” 

Tag’s foot slid forward like he was wading through water. Sparrow watched him take a step. He didn’t want to watch him die. But he didn’t have a weapon. Tag… did. Sparrow hadn’t noticed it before, when it had been mostly covered by his leather jacket, or when he’d been walking behind him. Tag had a knife strapped at the small of his back. 

Sparrow’s eyes flickered around the room, his mind suddenly coming into focus. If Tag was armed…. He was SOLDIER. He would win. 

There were three members of the waitstaff lying on the floor, their hands tied behind their backs. The mother and her baby were knelt by the wall, under a set of windows, the baby’s fussing growing louder by the moment. A man in a buisness suit kneeling on the ground, his arms wrapped tightly around a briefcase and his nose bleeding sluggishly. Four people in masks, scattered around the train car, all of their guns trained on Tag, who was standing in front of him. Sparrow realized he was in the way. Tag couldn’t move without putting him in the line of fire. 

Sparrow felt his legs tense under him, then he flung himself to the side, the opposite side from the mother and her baby. A few gun barrels followed him, but they didn’t for long. 

Tag shot forward, kicking off so hard he left a dent in the carpeted metal floor of the train car. The man in the red splattered mask didn’t have time to pull his trigger before Tag’s left fist landed solidly in his gut. His right rose up and cracked the man across the jaw. The man in the red splattered mask went down with a grunt. His pistol fell from his fingers and clattered to the ground, spinning across the floor of the train car, towards the mother and her baby. 

Sparrow’s eyes followed it. He wasn’t the best shot on their team, but he was the only one there. It was three against one. He had to help somehow. He could even those odds. 

Sparrow darted across the floor as Tag twisted around to slam the heal of his boot into the side of the second masked person’s head, sending her sprawling over a table. The two people left raised their guns. Sparrow’s fingers curled around the fallen pistol. He had to help. He couldn’t let Tag get hurt. He wouldn’t. In the same motion as he grabbed the gun, Sparrow twisted his body, throwing the barrel of the gun over the edge of the table. His knees pressed painfully into the rough carpet. His knuckles turned white on the gun’s handle. 

Tag kicked the third person’s legs out from under her. She squeezed the trigger as she fell, littering the top of the train car with holes. Sparrow took a deep breath in through his nose, practically tasting the gunfire in the air. Two quick shots, two barks from the short muzzle in his hands, and the last masked person fell, taking one shot in his shoulder and another in his hip. He landed heavily, his gun spinning away under a bench. Tag was upon him a moment later, making sure he couldn’t do anything else.

Sparrow let out a long sigh and slowly stood up, forcing himself to take deep breaths. He knew his hands were shaking. It was all so much. He hadn’t expected anything like this. He couldn’t think straight. His hands and body moved on autopilot. He stood up and stepped around the table, taking an aborted step towards Tag. Tag stood with his back to him. Sparrow felt his heart beating in his throat as he tried to swallow.

The world fell into a surreal vision. Oddly focused and oddly out of focus. Everything stood out in details. A soft chirp came from Tag’s hip. Tag shifted his weight, twisting his shoulders. Locks of his hair fell in front of his eyes. His long eyelashes shone with a reflected mako glow. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out his PHS. 

Tag clicked through a couple screens, and huffed softly through his nose. “How does he always know…?” He clicked something else, then tucked his PHS away, back into his pocket. Sparrow took a few steps forward, then half a step back. Tag twisted even more, looking up at Sparrow. “There’s another one in the engine car. Can you handle this here?” 

Sparrow dipped his chin a little, wrestling with himself as he dragged his mind back from that surreal place. He could handle this, whatever it was. Tag nodded and turned back, jogging to the door on the far side of the train car. He slipped through without another word. 

Sparrow was left standing there for a long moment, staring at the closed door. Some part of him was panicking, screaming at him to go after him, to stop something bad from happening. But he recognized that feeling and knew it wasn’t real. It wasn’t real any more. Cloud was gone.

Except, now he wasn’t. 

Sparrow stuffed the thoughts into the back of his mind and the gun into his belt. He scurried over to where the three members of the waitstaff were lying on the floor, trying to offer them a reassuring smile. He didn’t think he managed it. The two that were conscious looked up at him and twisted so he could reach their bindings easier. He tugged the ropes off their wrists and ankles, carefully working the knots free. 

The sound of a door opening made him look up, but instead of Tag returning, Sparrow saw Randy and Reed standing in the door leading back to their compartment. “We heard gunshots…,” Randy explained. Reed slipped past him, kneeling next to the mother and her wailing baby. Sparrow blinked. He hadn’t even noticed the infant’s crying. Randy suddenly appeared next to him, helping him untie the unconscious waiter. “Sparrow…, hey Birdie, where’s Tag? Ai said he was with you.” 

Randy pressed two fingers to the pulse point on Sparrow’s neck, then held the back of his hand against his forehead. Sparrow nodded a little, forcing himself to take a few more deep breaths. “He- he went to the engine car… to deal with the last one.” 

Randy nodded and helped Sparrow stand up, then pushed him down to sit on a bench. “You okay, Birdie?” 

Sparrow nodded, closing his eyes until his head felt steadier. “Yeah, just- wasn’t expecting having to fight a hijacking at six in the morning after maybe two hours of crappy sleep.” He opened his eyes and smiled up at Randy. 

“Try five-thirty,” Reed piped up. He was kneeling in front of the buisness man, holding a cloth to the man’s bloody nose. “No, don’t tilt your head. Just pinch it.”

“Oh, that’s so much better,” Sparrow snarked, rolling his eyes. 

“I’m gonna go after him,” Randy said softly, standing up and pulling away from Sparrow. “I’ll see if I can find the train’s radio, let the authorities in Kalm know we’re coming with them.” He gestured at the masked people with his boot. “Someone might wanna tie them up before they wake up.”

“On it!” Reed chirped, jumping to his feet. Randy disappeared through the door.

Sparrow made a move to stand as well, but his legs were shaking so much he sat back down. The barrel of the pistol in his belt hit the seat with a sharp sound. Sparrow pulled it out and set it on the table before him. He starred down at it, feeling unsteady and unattached to his body. He heard a sharp curse from one of the masked people. With a sinking heart, he realized that one was the one he’d shot. That one was the only one bleeding. With a heart like glass, heavy as lead, Sparrow realized that Tag hadn’t ever drawn a weapon. Sparrow, in all his life, had never felt so weak and helpless. 

When Tag and Randy returned, the final masked person in hand and unconscious, Sparrow plastered the biggest grin he could manage across his face. “Took you long enough!” He laughed. 

~

They pulled into Kalm station two hours later, after the sun had risen above the horizon. The five would be hijackers were escorted off the train by nearly a dozen armed guards. Sparrow watched as one of them limped heavily, feeling the slightest bit guilty about shooting him. But then he spotted the mother, holding her now sleeping baby, drifting away through the crowd of the station, and he suddenly didn’t feel guilty at all. Reed tugged on his arm, winding them through the crush of people until they found an empty space, now solidly on Kalm ground. The others set down their luggage, Aiji was sitting on his bag. Tag shifted shyly from foot to foot, apparently trying to disappear into his leather jacket. 

“Well,” Randy sighed, running a hand through his hair. “That was more exciting than expected.” The others nodded in agreement. 

“So…,” Reed started, “Does anyone know how we actually find Cloud?” 

A pregnant pause answered ‘no’.

“Alright then.” Reed sighed, picking at the scar that ran across the bridge of his nose. 

“I think we should check the inns,” Randy supplied. 

“And maybe get a room ourselves,” Reed agreed, “Some of us didn’t get much sleep the past few days.” He looked pointedly at Randy and Aiji, who looked sheepish and huffed respectively. 

“Then,” Ward hummed, “Reed, Tagger, and I will look around for Cloud. You three, get some rest.

“Wha-?!” Sparrow gasped, “Me…?!” 

“I’m fine, Ward.” Aiji said in a stony cold voice, glaring up at Ward.

“Then keep watch.” Ward stared back at him, his eyes as steady and cold as his voice. There was a long moment where the tension mounted in the air, chilly even in the winter air that wafted through Kalm’s streets. 

“Fine.” Aiji relented finally. Sparrow heard Reed breath out a sigh of relief beside him.

Sparrow shifted his weight nervously. “Um… so I… had a thought.” All eyes turned to him. “Well, uh, this is probably gonna get dangerous right? If just the stuff on the train is anything to go by… so we’ll need weapons, won’t we?”

There was a moment of quiet thoughtfulness, and several agreeing nods. “That is a good idea. We’ll take a look.” Ward pointed at the three of them. “You will rest.” 

Aiji huffed irritably, “Fine.” He spun on his heal and marched towards the large building with the inn sign hanging from it. Sparrow looked back and forth between Aiji’s retreating back and Ward’s stern look, then quickly scurried after Aiji when Randy nudged him in the ribs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm super interested to hear what y'all think about this so far. Lemme know what you think about the characters so far. :3c
> 
> I actually have a pretty big story planned already and I'm really excited to see where the characters go as we get into it.


	3. Kalm

Less than half a year was not long enough to grieve, Sparrow knew that plainly. The suddenness of it, the unexpectedness… god, Titan, there shouldn’t have been anywhere safer in the world for him! On his home turf, flanked by two Firsts, Fair and the freaking GENERAL for fucks sake, and yet… Cloud was gone. MIA: assumed KIA, but there were no bodies. They hadn’t even been able to find any bodies…. Sparrow knew it was stupid to hope, to even hope that there was any way that Cloud wasn’t dead. But… he still did. 

Five months was more that enough time for any thing to be resolved. If Fair and The General had been captured by the dying remnants of Avalanche, as stupidly unlikely as that would be, Shinra’s forces would have fallen upon them like a guillotine where ever there was so much as a whisper. If it’d been some kind of fiend surge, one stupidly powerful enough to push back the freaking General, it wouldn’t have lasted this long. If it was an avalanche, the natural disaster kind, they would have been dug out. If it was some group from Wutai, well that was even more unlikely than an avalanche. Even whatever remnants there might be of the Genesis army, the weird clone people or whatever, would stand no chance, let alone for months on end, wasn’t their style anyways.

No, Cloud was gone. He had to accept that. But he couldn’t. He just couldn’t believe it, couldn’t buy it. There should have been something, at least something to find. But no. Cloud was gone without a trace, along with the two most powerful men in the world. Whatever had wiped them out… well, hopefully they got it back. For Cloud. At least. 

Sparrow felt the wave of guilt and sadness wash over him as he trudged back to Shinra Tower from his shift at the Sector Four train station. He wanted to stuff his hands in his pockets and hang his head, maybe scuff his feet as he walked, but he was still in uniform and he really wasn’t in the mood to get reprimanded. He made himself walk back, instead of taking the train. He’d let his mission partner take the train. It was fine, since they were off duty. He wove up and down, trying to lose himself in the webwork of streets.

He wished he could be like the others, like Aiji or Randy, who had walked through the grieving process in a week and a half. But they were Midgar born, and death was something people just got over in Midgar. He wished he could be like Reed and Ward, who’d seen so much death in their time serving Shinra that it barely bothered them anymore. They were still sad to lose Cloud, but they were functional, not like him. 

Sparrow let out a soft sigh, tightening his hand around his rifle strap. Keep it together. Keep it together. He had to keep it together. He forced himself to raise his chin, to walk with a determination and purpose he hadn’t felt in ages. He hadn’t reached the tower when he stopped in his tracks, a sharp glimmer of fluttering gold catching his eye. 

There he was.

There he was! Walking just a few dozen feet in front of him, his back towards him, was…. “Cloud…?” It had to be him. It had to be! Sparrow felt his chest constricting around his lungs, making it hard to breath. He took two quick steps forward, then another. “Cloud…!” 

Cloud didn’t turn to look at him. Sparrow wasn’t even sure he heard him. So he started rushing after him. He needed to catch up. He couldn’t lose him again. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized how odd it was to suddenly find him just walking around Midgar. In that same place in the back of his mind, Sparrow recognized the green SOLDIER Third Class uniform. 

“Cloud!” Sparrow gasped as he finally caught up to him. His hand landed heavily on the man’s pauldron, turning him so he could see his face. 

Sparrow felt the world come to a standstill. This person… wasn’t Cloud…. He looked similar, to be sure, close enough to maybe be related, but no. This person wasn’t Cloud. He realized that as the blond man stared up at him with a Mako glow in his eyes.

“I…,” Sparrow breathed, suddenly feeling horrendously stupid. He jerked back, snapping into a salute. “I’m sorry, sir. I… thought you were someone else.” He waited to be reprimanded, punched maybe. The rumors about SOLDIERs didn’t paint them as the most forgiving types. 

But the blond man, who wasn’t Cloud, just stared up at him for a minute, blinking in confusion. Then he responded in a surprisingly soft voice. “Uh- at ease….”

Sparrow slowly lowered his arm, feeling a blush of shame and embarrassment heating his face under his helmet. He bit the inside of his lip to stop himself from saying anything stupid. 

The blond man stared back at him for another long moment. Then piped up, “It’s okay. I’m not mad.”

“Right… sir…,” Sparrow murmured, shifting uncomfortably. He couldn’t just walk away, could he? No, he couldn’t. This man was a SOLDIER and, therefor, higher ranking. But… he didn’t want to say anything else. 

The blond man opened his mouth to say something else, but a soft chirp came from his belt. The blond man blinked and pulled out his PHS, clicking through a few screens. “Ah, yeah, yeah. I’m coming.” He looked up at Sparrow, the Mako giving his eyes an unnaturally blue hue. “I’ll… see you around then.” He raised his hand a little as he turned, jogging off into the sprawl of buildings.

“Right…,” Sparrow murmured, raising his arm a little, then dropping it to hang limply at his side. He felt so stupid. But at the same time, the sadness and guilt and grief in his chest drained away, leaving nothing but an empty hallow in their wake. Gods… he wished Cloud was here. Then… he might be happy right now, instead of empty. 

~

Tag shook off the strange encounter, after all, it was far from the worst one he’d had that day. Getting mistaken for someone else was so… mundane. It felt nice. He couldn’t help the small smile that crept over his lips. His steps felt lighter as he jogged through the crowd of Midgar’s streets, weaving seamlessly through pedestrians and the odd scooter. The crowds thinned out to nothing as he got nearer to the edge of the plate. It was expected, but there were usually some kind of construction workers, or some surveyors from Urban Development.

He spotted King in the midst of an open area, framed by construction machines and supplies. Tag smiled as the much larger man turned towards him. King smiled raising a hand to wave at him. Tag slowed to a stop beside him, craning his neck to smile up at him. 

King was a SOLDIER, one of the biggest ones in Shinra history. That fact stood out even more when he was next to people Tag’s size. Tag barely came halfway up his chest. He had to stand on his toes to touch the top of the man’s head. King was a year his senior within SOLDIER, but the same age as Tag himself. 

They were an odd pair, but worked well together. They’d been unofficial partners for nearly five months, after they’d saved each other on an exciting mission outside of Midgar. After, they picked missions together whenever they could, which ended up as fiend hunting almost every time. King was Tag’s best friend, though it wasn’t much of a competition. He was his only friend. 

“Hello there, little Fang,” King chuckled, dropping his hand onto Tag’s head, ruffling his hair between his fingers. “Lose your helmet again?”

Tag tilted his head up against his hand, humming contentedly. “Leaving it’s becoming a habit.”

“A bad habit. You spend way too much time with the Turks, Kalm Fang.”

“Like the SOLDIERs are any better,” Tag scoffed. He shifted his weight as he looked up at the skeleton of the partly assembled building in front of them. 

“Different flavors of chaos, I know.” King chuckled softly, shaking his head. He pulled his hand off Tag’s head, letting his hair slip through his fingers. 

“More like different breads,” Tag muttered. His head tilted upwards to follow King’s hand, then cocked to the side. He looked up at King, mako bright blue eyes glittering as a smile crept across his lips. “So Behemoth, what’s the mission for today?”

King hummed agreeably and shifted his weight, drawing his claymore from the magnetic sheath on his back. “A pack of Whole Eaters moved up from the Undercity and started nesting in the frame.” He gestured towards the skeleton of the building in front of them with the tip of his buster. 

“A _whole_ pack of _Whole_ Eaters?” Tag hummed, a cheesy grin flashing across his face before he reigned it back in. He tilted his head, shifting his weight from side to side as he scanned the skeleton building for any sign of movement. “Well, that sounds like less than optimal working conditions.”

“Probably.” King’s face split into a grin. “Shall we help them out?”

“Sure. Didn’t have anything better to do, so….” Tag drew his own sword, holding it loosely in his hand. 

King chuckled softly, a soft rumble from his chest that sounded a bit like a deep purr. “You’re getting better at the banter.”

Tag tilted his head, a grin spreading across his face. “I have a good sparring partner.”

“Better believe it, Fang.” King flashed a grin down at him, “Cause I kinda like mine too, and he’s not getting rid of me for a long ass time.”

The shriek of several Whole Eaters, who had finally decided the two intruders had gotten too close, let Tag pretend he didn’t feel his face heat up. For once, he wished he was wearing his helmet.

~

Jasper Reed was not very happy to be back in his hometown. He’d left for a reason, all those years ago, and only half of it had been his family. Kalm itself had been just as stifling as the rest of his family, maybe even more so. Point was, he hated being back home, not that it was ever really his home. It made him nervous, and when he was nervous, he started fidgeting. He alternated between tugging at his hair and twisting his ponytail between his fingers and picking at the scar that crossed the bridge of his nose. He made a silent vow to himself that he would not so much as pause if they passed his childhood home. He owed himself that much. 

Swallowing the sour feeling that rose in his throat, Reed hurried to fall into step beside Tag, who was managing to keep stride with Ward despite the older man’s long legs. Their pace was too fast for a walk, but too slow for double time. Damn Ward and his long legs. 

Reed struggled to keep up with the awkward pace, getting winded after only a few streets. They were in the buisness district, thank Mog and his fucking bird, so they didn’t go anywhere near his old home. It was still early, so early that the night time mist still wafted through the air, reflecting the light of the streetlamps, so there was hardly anyone around. 

“So…,” Reed huffed after several long minutes of half walking, half running. “What are… we looking for… exactly?”

“Weapon shop.” Ward said simply, twisting his head to glance down a side street. Tag raised his head a little, his nostrils flaring as he gave a sharp nod. “Or Cloud.”

“You’re expecting to find him… just out and around?” Reed balked. “We… would have had better luck… trying the inn. He’s not going ta- to be out… this time of morning…. Not if he’s smart.”

Tag’s head tilted curiously as he fixed his mako shined blue eyes on Reed’s own, unshined shade of blue. He didn’t slow his step. Damn him and his SOLDIER shit.

“He- he’s on the run… from Shinra…,” Reed continued in a much softer voice, confident that Tag could hear him anyways. “He wou- wouldn’t be out… out this time of day…!”

Tag made a ‘huh’ sound in his throat. His pace slowed to almost a normal speed of walking. Reed almost thanked Mog out loud. “That is a good point. It would be strange, tourists being up and about so early.” He said that last part towards Ward.

Ward slowed to a stop a moment later, turning his shoulders so he could look back at them as they caught up. “The weapon shops are open though, right?”

“Ye- yeah…,” Reed huffed as he tried to catch his breath. “Most of the ones I remember were… early openers. Cause- Because fiend hunters are… early risers, I guess.”

“Nocturnal fiends are sluggish in early morning hours,” Tag reported simply, shifting his feet into a wide stance and crossing his arms. “They’re easier to hunt when they’re not at their best.”

Ward nodded in agreement. “My Rockets ambushed a King Behemoth that way.”

Reed and Tag both did a double take. “King Behemoth- seriously!?” Reed gaped at him, suddenly losing all control over his own jaw.

Ward’s lips quirked up at the edges. “Surprised it with explosives and fire materia in its sleep. It wasn’t as impressive as you’re thinking.”

“Still is impressive.” Tag tilted his head, eyebrows raised. Ward smiled a little more and waved him off.

“How have I never heard this story before…?” Reed murmured under his breath.

Ward pursed his lips, looking down the street like he was hoping Cloud would just appear if he watched long enough. “Although, I suppose… you are right, Reed.”

“Huh?” Reed blinked, not quite catching that leap in logic.

“Cloud has always had a good head. He would keep it down for now. Let’s head back to the inn and make a search plan with the others. Perhaps we will find him there.” 

Reed felt a small smile leap to his lips. “Right. We… we should do that.” He straightened his shoulders, suddenly feeling pleased with himself. 

They marched back towards the inn, thankfully at a normal walking pace, just as the sun finally began to eat away at the morning mist. Reed looked around at his home town, feeling that sense of anxious foreboding kicking back in. It was worse this time, much more potent, like he was a young teenager again, trying to sneak back home before anyone noticed that he’d been gone all night, before anyone could start wondering where he’d been, and with who.

In the nearly empty street of Kalm, filled only with a cool morning mist and the gently wafting smell of baking bread…. Reed had never felt more ‘in danger’ in the entirety of his adult life. He chewed the inside of his lip, twisting his ponytail too tight around his fingers, his eyes flickered around nervously. He was being paranoid – he knew it was unreasonable – but he had the feeling like someone, anyone, everyone, from his family would leap out of the shadows at any moment. He didn’t know what he thought would happen next, but he knew it wouldn’t be anything good, or that he’d want Ward or Tag to see. He trusted them with his life, not… not with this.

“-don’t you think, Reed?”

“Huh?!” Reed started, his mind snapping out of whatever nightmare train it had been on and reeling as it tried to come back to the present. He felt his face growing warmer. 

Ward’s eyebrow raised a micrometer towards his hairline. He could always see right through him, couldn’t he? Damn Ward and his intuition. 

Reed swallowed his flush, squaring his shoulders. He glanced around, searching for a way to orient himself. They had paused at the intersection between Green Root Road and Travelers’ Lane. Tag’s chin was tilted upwards and swaying side to side, his nostrils flaring. Ward was looking at him expectantly. Reed cleared his throat, “What- what was the question? I wasn’t listening.”

“Food,” Tag chirped helpfully. 

“Know of any places that are open this early?” Ward asked, eyeing him with far too much understanding. 

Reed ignored Ward for the moment, Tag was easier to look at right now, since he wasn’t looking at him. “There should be a bakery down Travelers’ Lane,” Reed said, pointing down the street. Tag’s head immediately snapped towards it. “They service fiend hunters too and… bakeries open early anyways.”

Tag turned his bright blue eyes on Ward, for once he looked as young as he should have been when they’d met him. Reed tried to shake off the thought, age was a sensitive subject. Ward hummed thoughtfully, then nodded. “Let’s get something for the others too.”

Tag bounced on the balls of his feet and rounded on the street, bouncing down the lane with all the excitement the first batch of backed goods could warrant. Ward chuckled, a soft rumble that rolled off his shoulders. He followed after Tag at that too fast walking pace. Reed swallowed a curse and scurried after them.

Damn Ward and his long legs. Damn Tag and his SOLDIER shit.

~

Tag swept into the hotel room with a big bag of doughnuts swinging from his fist. “We come baring food!” Sparrow was out of his bed before the door had fully swung open. Randy, lounging in a chair by the window, let out a small gasp of wonder the moment the smell reached his nose. Aiji, a series of lumps under a nest of blankets, about a third of which looked pilfered from the four unoccupied beds in the room, didn’t so much as twitch. 

Tag made his way to one of the small tables along the wall of the room, bouncing the doughnut bag out of Sparrow’s grasping hands. Reed felt his lips quirk up as he watched them squabble, or rather, as he watched Sparrow squabbling at Tag, who was gracefully ignoring him. Ward entered the room last, sparing one last look out the hallway before closing the door. 

The five of them gathered around the table as Tag pulled napkins and doughnuts out of the bag. Randy leaned over the table and sniffed at the bag hungrily. “Those smell so good.”

“Taaaaaaggg…!” Sparrow whined, crouching down so he could prop his chin up on the table and give Tag the puppy eyes. “Pwease….”

Tag scoffed and rolled his eyes, sliding a pink frosted doughnut with rainbow colored sprinkles towards him. “Well, since you asked so nicely.” There were only shreds of pink frosting and beheaded sprinkles left by the time Randy got his doughnut. When Sparrow started eyeing his doughnut, a braided thing that really shouldn’t count as a doughnut, Randy narrowed his eyes and slowly pulled it towards himself. 

Reed accepted his plain glazed doughnut straight from Tag’s hand. Ward had taken his own out of the bag in the meantime, so no one stopped sparrow from rooting around in it for poor lost sprinkles and frosting bits. Sparrow pulled out what looked like a paper soup bowl and made a questioning sound at Tag. 

“For Aiji,” Ward answered, snagging a dripping glob of jelly before it could fall. He stuck his finger in his mouth and sucked it off. 

“He likes waking up slowly, with a cup of tea,” Reed smiled, gingerly taking the container from Sparrow and setting it down. 

Sparrow tilted his head. “How do you know that?”

“I actually see him when he wakes up,” Reed huffed through his nose, “unlike you heathens that wake up early to run.”

“Running is healthy,” Sparrow plopped himself in a chair and dropped one ankle on the other knee. “You run during training.”

“Not at _five am_! And defiantly not to wake up. My legs would give up on me and _fall off_!”

“Old man.”

“I-! I am not an _old man_!”

“Totally _are_ ….”

“Shh.” Randy hissed, jabbing a finger against his lips. “Aiji’s still sleeping, _both_ of you.” He looked pointedly at Reed and Sparrow. Sparrow tucked his lips inside his mouth and mimed zipping it shut. Reed looked away as he felt himself blushing. Maybe it was good that he was getting into silly squabbles. Maybe that… made him not as… mature. Yeah, okay. That didn’t sound… great, now that he’d thought about it. Maybe it was his hometown getting to him. The last time he’d been here… he had been a child. He sourly bit down on his doughnut, shuddering and letting go when he tasted the paper napkin. 

“So,” Randy said after a minute, settling back into his chair by the window. “Did you find, Cloud?” 

Tag and Ward both, helpfully, silently shook their heads. Reed rolled his eyes and sighed. “No. But we figured he’d probably stay inside at least until the crowds come out for the day.”

Randy nodded, twisting one of his braids around his fingers. He’d redone them, Reed noticed. The set of them were braided with crystalline blue and lightning yellow, their squad colors. He unconsciously reached for the little badge on the inside of his uniform cuff, only to catch himself when he realized he was still in civilian clothes. He’s packed his infantry uniform, of course, but he couldn’t wear it now, and so, couldn’t reach for the Lords of Strife badge for comfort. Time to break that habit, he guessed. 

A little over an hour and a half later, around nine o’clock local time, the streets swelled to life. People started off to work, the miners heading for the trains that would take them down south, the shop owners sweeping off their doorsteps, and the children started off towards either school or their apprentices, depending on their ages. Kalm was an old-fashioned town with some new-fashioned twists. Reed found himself feeling a little nostalgic, and a little sick. He debated convincing the others to let him stay inside, but figured that’d be selfish of him.

Tag woke Aiji up with bowl of tea. It was steaming as he opened the lid and wrapped Aiji’s hands around it. Aiji blinked, bleary eyed and blankly at the framed picture that hung on the wall across from his bed. It was a pretty picture of the forever rolling green fields outside of Kalm. Aiji looked a little lopsided, like he was trying to orient himself to the horizon of the picture. He blinked at it like the picture had somehow offended him, then took another swig of his tea. 

Randy had showered first, then Tag, at Ward’s insistence, then Sparrow, and Reed, at Ward’s pointed look. He really couldn’t say no when Ward gave him that look. Ward was coming out of the shower now, toweling his hair dry and shuffling around in his boxers like the shower had actually lulled him more to sleep than woken him up, which was stupid and impossible because Ward took showers that would have been room temperature in _Icicle_. 

Aiji yawned hugely and slid out of bed, tipping the soup bowl all the way upside down and slurping the remainder of the tea. “Alright- I’m up. What’s the sitrep?” He looked around the room, saw Ward trudging towards his duffel bag, and rolled his eyes. Then he plopped down on the bed, snatched his PHS off the nightstand and looked up expectantly. 

“Doughnut shop on Travelers’ Lane,” Tag reported. As if that was the most important piece of information. Well… maybe. “Good prices and friendly. Or they didn’t notice….” He trailed off and tapped the edge of his eye socket. 

“People around here don’t… hate Shinra,” Reed started a little hesitantly. “At least no where near as bad as some people in the slums. At least, when I left-”

“Ages ago!” Sparrow interjected.

“When I left…,” Reed shot a glare at him, “they were happy enough to coexist. Shinra doesn’t have a lot of power here, but they’ll have some kind of presence.”

“Why are we talking like we’re not Shinra?” Randy mumbled, laying his hand across his eyes and setting his elbow on the arm of his chair. “We are Shinra.”

“At least until they find out why we’ve actually left,” Sparrow grimaced. “Thought we were all ready for that….”

“Well… yeah, I guess, but….” Randy started, waving his hand in exasperation. “We are still Shinra. We can’t change that. Even if- gods, I am not phrasing this right….”

“You mean,” Ward rumbled, touching the healed burn that made up the skin above his heart. “Here. We can’t change who we are, where we’ve come from.”

Randy dipped his head, closing his eyes. “…even if we can’t go back, we’re still… LOS squad. And that’s Shinra. That has… always been- Shinra… to me.” 

There was a long moment of silence before Randy looked up at Tag and spoke again. “And you- you’re sure about this too. There- you won’t be able to go back.” 

A cryptic smile spread across Tag’s face. “Don’t worry about me. I do have some allies in high places. So long as I don’t get caught doing something very plainly illegal, I can make it out.” His smile dropped away. “But, if it does come to that, I’m in with you guys, they’ll understand. It’s… well, there’s no real civilian word for it….”

“What do you mean ‘civilian’?” Sparrow cried, throwing his arms up into the air. “None of us are civilian! We’ve been in longer than you have!”

Tag shifted his weight from foot to foot, tugging at a lock of his hair. “That’s not-” He sighed. “The wording isn’t important. I’m ready to come with you, no matter the consequences.”

Ward hummed low in his throat and nodded. “And we are happy to have you.” They all nodded agreement, though Sparrow was still squinting at him over that ‘civilian’ comment. Reed really had no idea what Tag was talking about, but… it was probably unimportant. The details were, at least. 

Aiji patted Tag on the small of his back, jerking his head up at him, then nodding at Randy. “You two suck at words today.”

Randy grumbled something under his breath and shifted in his chair. Tag shuffled his feet and mumbled something too soft for Reed to hear, though Aiji smirked and rolled his eyes. 

“Anyway…. Getting back to Cloud…?” Sparrow piped up, rolling his head up to look at Ward. “What’s the plan, Leader?”

Ward grunted and shifted in his chair, thankfully now wearing pants. He crossed one ankle over his knee and touched his fist to his mouth as he thought. “To find Cloud without making ourselves suspicious to Shinra or pushing Cloud into flight…. We know he was last seen with three or four other people, but we should expect that they met up with more of Avalanche either here or along the way. Expect to be outnumbered.”

Reed nodded sharply. Bad odds in a fight. Avoid conflict as able. Got it. 

Ward scratched the stubble on his chin, glaring down at the floor boards like they could show him where Cloud was, if only he could glare them into submission. “We split up into teams of two, patrol the town until we catch sight of him, his associates, or sundown. We will convene and rotate teams at lunch, one, and dinner, six. Then, if we haven’t found Cloud by sundown, we come back here and regroup. Objections?”

Reed shook his head, seeing the others shaking their heads too. Until Aiji piped up, raising his hand, “Not an objection, but a question.”

“Go ahead,” Ward nodded. 

“You said patrol, but we were talking about getting weapons earlier, and we don’t want to look… suspicious, so are we playing the tourists? Or… mercs?”

Ward nodded. “Not a strict patrol. I honestly don’t expect any of us to just run into him, but keep an eye out when you’re window-shopping, an ear too.”

“Cloud’s always been a trouble magnet,” Randy mused, twisting a braid around his finger. “So, if he is still in town, there should be some scuttlebutt or other chatter.”

“More or less,” Ward hummed, leaning back in his chair. He looked up at Aiji, who nodded, question answered. “Wait fifteen minutes between departures, keep in touch over PHS, stay out of trouble.” They all nodded. Reed felt a knot twisting painfully in his throat.

~

Reed had Aiji for the first shift, Tag going with Sparrow and Ward going with Randy. He was mentally begging for no small talk, Aiji could be a chatterbox, once he got going. And Reed knew that sooner or later, if he started talking, he’d ask about his family. That was not a topic Reed wanted to talk about. Not with anyone of them. 

Reed kept them out of the residential district as much as he could. His mother and father, if they were still here, would be working there. His father had been a roofer, doing chimney sweeping services for an additional charge. His mother, the local mailwoman, would be running things around to houses in shifts. There was a mail-carrier for the buisness district too, but Reed was less worried about whoever was running that district. He couldn’t have asked to stay behind, not with Cloud on the line, again. He couldn’t… he couldn’t let Cloud go, not again.

They were the last pair to stop by the weapon shops, at least Aiji had reported that the last time he’d looked up from his PHS and suggested they head over there next. Reed trailed behind Aiji as he swept into the store with a level of confidence that only came from a slum kid with something to prove, not that the kid hadn’t earned it a dozen times over. 

Reed mentally chastised himself. Not a kid, not any more. Mog and Chocobo, he felt old every time he thought about that. He’d been the second oldest in their squad, nine years younger than Ward, and just as many older than Randy. Sparrow and Aiji had been fifteen when they’d met, but now… they were undeniably adults. It was hard not to think of them as kids sometimes. 

Aiji prodded Reed’s arm painfully, making him jump. “So, which one are you looking at?” Aiji prompted. Reed blinked and looked around at the shelves and shelves of different weapons. There were all other sorts of blades, from short swords to kitchen knives, some swords that looked like they’d been cast from a SOLDIER mold. Blades made him nervous though, so he shuffled past that rack, practically hearing Aiji roll his eyes as he muttered, “nervous old man” under his breath. 

“With age comes wisdom, Brat,” Reed grumbled back in his best Ward impression. Aiji snorted, but trailed along after him. Reed poked through the spear section for a while, eyeing a strange spear with a fragmented staff with a wary eye. It looked like it would split apart and something would jump out at him at any second. He very carefully didn’t touch it and stepped past it. 

Aiji held him up at a rack of Wutaian styled weapons. Reed hung out next to him, even though there was no way in Hades’ frozen hell he was touching something with six blades that you were supposed to throw! Aiji picked up a large fan and flicked his wrist, extending it seamlessly. Reed’s eyebrows rose as a surprisingly fond smile crossed his face. “My mother had a tessen fan like this,” Aiji said softly, turning it over in his hands to examine the intricate painting on the other side. “Hers had roses and birds though.” The one in his hand had a design of lines and dots.

“What is that…?” he muttered, mostly to himself.

“It’s the Leviathan constellation,” Aiji said, like it was an easy thing to just know.

Reed hummed softly in acknowledgement as Aiji carefully folded it up and set it down. Reed side-eyed a very particular staff that had sharp metal spikes covering one end. “Looks like a nail bat had a baby with a staff…,” he muttered to himself, poking the non-spikey end with a cautious finger, like the thing might bite him. 

Aiji huffed and rolled his eyes. “You handle guns every day, how do these things freak you out?”

“Cut my foot off…,” Reed muttered, turning away.

“Yeah, and your gun could blast your foot off too!” Aiji threw his hands in the air in exasperation. He grabbed a spear with a bright blue ribbon and three materia holes in it and turned away from the stand. “I’m getting this one.” He snatched the fan up too. “And this.”

Reed shied away from the spear and side stepped into the staff section. This was better, no sharp and pointy ends to take his fingers off. He reached for a silver staff with intricate endcaps. His fingers brushed against a hand that appeared out of nowhere. Reed and the young lady jumped at the same time, making surprisingly similar sounding gasps. Reed and the young lady blinked at each other and broke into crooked grins. 

“Sorry,” the young lady smiled shyly. 

The young lady was pretty. Her long dark brown hair that hung low down her back in a twisting braid, with two shorter, looser braids framing her face. She wore a light pink dress that had faded to nearly white with time, and a sturdy leather jacket, with boots to match. She had the brightest green eyes Reed had ever seen. 

“Not at all miss,” Reed smiled back, gesturing for her to go ahead. “The apologies are mine.” When she hesitated, he shook his head and gestured again, “Please go ahead, I’m just browsing.” 

The young lady smiled gently, reaching for it again. She picked up the staff, holding it in her hands like she was testing its balance. Her lips pressed together as her eyebrows furrowed. “Hmm.”

“Browsing?” Aiji scoffed, stepping back into the aisle with his new spear in a cloth carrying bag. “You’re supposed to be buying.” He pointed at him accusingly with his new fan.

Reed shot him an irritated look. “I’m browsing for now. When I find something I like, then I’ll buy it.” 

The young lady giggled softly. “Sounds reasonable.” She set the silver staff back, then leaned in, closer to Reed. “I wouldn’t recommend that staff though. It’s more for decoration than durability.” 

“I see,” Reed smiled at her, ignoring Aiji’s glare boring into the back of his head. “Know a thing or two about staffs, miss?”

“Aerith,” the young lady said, extending her hand towards him, “Please call me Aerith.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Aerith.” Reed took her hand and shook it in the gentle civilian way, not the firm jerk the troopers tended to use. “My friends call me Reed.”

“Oh! I love that plant!” Aerith beamed.

“Actually, your friends call you old,” Aiji muttered at the same time.

Reed, and thankfully Aerith as well, gracefully ignored him. “Plant?” Reed tilted his head.

“Yes! Reeds are plants that grow by the water.”

“Hm. I never thought about that before.” Reed found himself smiling wider and brighter than he had in a while. He didn’t know why, but Aerith seemed be the cause of that. She was such a pretty young lady with such a pretty smile. 

“Aerith?” A soft voice called from the other end of the aisle. Another young lady was peering around the edge of the shelf, not in a shy way, Reed noticed, but a cautious one. She had long dark hair that was tied near the bottom. She was dressed in leather boots and a leather shirt, with tall leather gloves that went almost up to her shoulders. She was dressed like a Midgarian. 

Aerith turned around and grinned. “Tifa, come say hi.” She looked back at Reed, that bright smile spread wide across her face. “Tifa is my friend and traveling companion, one of them at least.”

Reed nodded and smiled. “Nice to meet you to miss. I’m Reed and the sour looking brat back there is Aiji. He is one of my traveling companions as well.” 

Aiji grumbled something under his breath bitterly, but stepped forward to stand by Reed’s shoulder. Reed smirked at him. Aiji jabbed him painfully in the side with his finger. 

Tifa stepped next to Aerith, her eyes flicking between them with suspicion. Reed smiled as warmly as he could. “So,” Reed started, “Are you two looking for anything in particular, or just browsing too?”

Aiji elbowed him sharply. “No browsing. You need to get something.”

“I’ll get a gun,” Reed glared at him. 

Aiji rolled his eyes hugely, muttering something probably insulting in Wutaian. Tifa shifted her weight. “Just checking if what’s here is better than what we have. You’re just picking… whatever?”

Reed shrugged. “Gotta start somewhere. We’re ah-” Reed wrinkled his nose, feeling the scar across it bend, “You see, a friend of ours is in a bit trouble, so we’re going to help him out.”

“Oh,” Aerith gasped, “I hope your friend is alright.” She smiled coyly. “If you want some help picking out a staff, I’d be more than happy to help you find one that will work for you.”

“Would you? I’d appreciate it.” Reed smiled a little wider when he heard Aiji muttering about old souls talking too much.

Aerith asked a few questions, what appealed to him about the staffs, what his skill level was, how good his coordination was. Reed answered all of them as truthfully as he could. He left out any mention of learning anything from his training in Shinra. “I like machines, actually,” he said, not really sure how he’d gotten to that topic. “I like the way the parts all work together and just move.” 

Aerith tilted her head slightly, letting out a soft hum. “Wait right here.” She turned abruptly and marched off down the aisle, turning out of view. Reed blinked. Okay…?

“You know martial arts?” he heard Aiji asking Tifa as he gestured towards her gloves.

“You can tell?” She sounded a little surprised. She shifted her weight and started to pick at the edges of her gloves.

“I can practically feel the power in how you _walk_. I know how someone carries themselves when they know how to fight. So, do you?” Aiji smirked the way he always did when he was asking a question that he already knew the answer to.

“Yeah. I learned most everything I know from Master Zangan. He taught in the village I grew up in.” She smiled a little shyly. “Do you know any?”

Aiji shook his head. “Just a couple things, self-defense mostly. I had a couple partial teachers, but none I could really call ‘Master’. I uh, grew up in Midgar’s Undercity, Sector Six.” 

Tifa nodded slightly, “I moved in to the Undercity a few years ago. I lived in Sector Seven, until-”

Aiji’s eyes widened, then dropped to the floor. “I’m sorry.”

Tifa smiled tightly. “Most of my… my friends got out, but-” she trailed off, hurt shining clearly in her eyes.

“I understand,” Aiji said softly. “I am sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” Tifa said back, just as softly, but with much more fragility.

Aerith appeared back at the end of the aisle with something held behind her back. “I found something.” She stepped over to them, dropping something first in Tifa’s hands with a “For you” then a larger, heavier thing into Reed’s arms with a “and for you!”

Reed blinked down at the heavy machine gun in his hands, turning it over carefully. It was far from the elegant models that Shinra issued, more like a tank than a war horse. It was bulky, and kinda heavy even for its size. On one side of its barrel the name was engraved, Laguna Desperado. Reed hummed to himself, running his fingers across the three materia slots, all three were linked. If he could find an ‘all’ and some accuracy materia….

“Do you like it?” Aerith smiled, leaning into his field of view. 

“Very much,” Reed breathed, “This… this is amazing. He’s a real beauty. I think I’ll just have to get this one.”

“Yay! I’m glad you like it.” Aerith grinned, “What about you Tifa?”

Tifa was flexing her hands in the pair of gloves Aerith had got her, her own pair stuffed into her waistband. She looked up, a little startled when Aerith laid a hand on her arm. “Oh! These are great Aer. Good pick.” Aerith grinned proudly. 

“Well then, shall we go buy these?” Reed proposed, raising his Desperado gleefully.

“We should, then we have to meet up with the others,” Aiji said just as his PHS chirped. “And that’s somebody telling us to hurry up. Bet you it’s Sparrow whining cause Ward won’t let him eat until we get there.” Aiji fished his PHS out of his pocket.

“Fifty gil says you’re wrong,” Reed shot back.

“Damn,” Aiji huffed. Reed chuckled as Tifa and Aerith snickered and giggled respectively. “It was Tag whining cause Ward won’t let him eat until we get there.”

Reed set his new machine gun on the counter. A grey-haired lady rang him up as he fished out his wallet. “Makes sense, you know. Tag ah-” Reed glanced at the young ladies and quickly redirected. “Tag has that… high metabolism and such, and I don’t think he actually ate dinner last night.”

Aiji hummed, musing over that. “Still just a lucky guess.”

“Flip of the coin, really.” Reed shrugged. “I was still right.”

Aiji waved his hand. “Yeah yeah, I’ll pay for your lunch.”

Reed looked up at Tifa and Aerith as they all stepped away from the counter. “Well it’s been lovely meeting both of you, but we really should go before our friends start chewing on each other. Ward will let that happen before he budges on making them wait to order.”

Aerith giggled behind her hand. “Yes, they can be like that, can’t they?”

“Hope to see you again,” Aiji smiled at Tifa, giving her a sharp nod. “We’re staying at the inn, if you want to hang around there until you ‘happen’ to run into us again.”

Tifa grinned. “I’ll keep that in mind.” She gave a short wave over her shoulder as she and Aerith went one way, while Reed and Aiji went the other.

~

“Well,” Randy said, looking around their room at the inn, “Cloud’s in town.” It was the end of the day, after they had patrolled the town, and Reed had successfully avoided anyone who knew him. They had followed the plan, but no one had seen any sign of Cloud all day. Sparrow made an excited noise around his late dinner, ground beef in a wrap. Reed had gotten one for all of them on his last round with Sparrow. Sparrow had been whining about food again, so Reed got him some to stuff in his mouth. While it did stop him from talking, it didn’t silence him completely.

“The guy in the general store confused him and Tag,” Randy explained. jerked a finger towards Tag, who was sitting by the open window, watching the sun setting. He seemed oddly distant, much more so than he had earlier in the day. That was a little worrying. But… not unusual.

“We told him Cloud was his brother – which isn’t a bad cover story to get information, for future reference – and he said Cloud and a big guy with a gun for an arm came in earlier, asking about getting to the Chocobo Farm. And he said he “pointed them towards Ol’ Choco-Bill’s Chocobo Farm,” so I say we go there next.”

Aiji nodded. “That’s the best lead we’ve had so far.” 

“So, do we leave now…,” Sparrow started.

“I’d suggest waiting and heading out in the morning,” Reed said, “We wouldn’t get to the farm before the nocturnal fiends come out and I want some practice with this in daylight first.” He patted Laguna Desperado, which was sitting next to him on the bed. He’d been taking it apart and cleaning it when Ward and Aiji had showed up.

“Good idea,” Sparrow grinned. “I know I really need to-”

“Tag?” Ward’s voice cut through the room. Reed, and everyone else in the room, turned to look at Tag, outlined in the blazing gold-orange of sunset. 

Tag’s lips were pulled back, like he was snarling, baring his teeth. His chin jerked upwards suddenly, and turned his head sideways, then back towards the window. His nostrils flared as his eyes narrowed. There was a long moment of tense silence, Reed felt himself leaning forward in his seat. Tag stared out the window, eyes flashing with mako. “I smell a SOLDIER.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was waffling over having an extra chapter between this and the next one, and this turned out longer than I thought it would, so I guess I will do that. I have a totally great idea that I'm gonna get to use next chapter so be warned! >:3c
> 
> If y'all have any ideas/theories about what weapons the others picked, feel free to give some ideas. ;pc 
> 
> I love hearing what you all think of my writing, so feel free to comment about whatever. ^<^ b
> 
> Edit: Oh! Did anybody catch the FFVIII reference? ;3


	4. Traveling

Tag felt like someone was watching him. The hair on the back of his neck was standing on end and there was an itching feeling between his shoulder blades. No matter which way he turned, what corridor or training room he slipped through, the creeping paranoia followed him. Or else it came and went of its own accord, on and off for almost two weeks. He’d been feeling weird, well weirder than usual, since his last visit with Professor Hojo. 

It had been his ‘six-month mako checkup,’ or so they’d said. Check up? Sure, but it had been far more than six months since Tag had his mako, so he had no idea what they were supposed to be checking. Maybe it was just procedure, nothing to do with him specifically. Maybe they were just paranoid. The General and First Fair had just disappeared, after all. 

The other SOLDIERs _had_ been muttering about paranoid scientists and Firsts ‘losing it’ since he’d arrived. They had been whispering about two Firsts that had deserted, a couple years before Tag had joined SOLDIER, so he didn’t recognize either name. Maybe the science department was doing stability checks. Maybe the same thing had happened with the General and First Fair that had happened to the other Firsts. 

Or maybe he was just being paranoid. Professor Hojo was… off putting. Maybe he’d just set Tag’s nerves on edge and the muttering and whispering that wafted around the SOLDIER floors just weren’t letting them settle. That was probably it. He should go to King about it. Or… maybe not. He didn’t want to bother him….

Tag chewed his lip. He and King were… friends… right? How did friends… work? He sighed through his nose, ignoring the prickling that was creeping up the back of his neck. Being in SOLDIER may be harder than he thought. But, well, what else was there? …for him.

A shock flashed through his body. Before he even realized it, he was moving. Tag whipped around, instinctually aiming to attack the thing behind him. His sword only made it half way out of its sheath before a strong hand clamped down on his wrist and forced it to stop. Tag’s eyes widened at the shock of red hair, the long tail of it fluttering from the flurry of movement. 

“Yooo,” a cocky voice snickered. The person with the shock red hair tilted his head up so he could look Tag in the eyes over their connected arms. “Somebody’s jumpy.” A wicked smirk flickered across his lips.

Tag blinked, eyes flickering over the redhead’s face, then down to his unkempt dark suit, then to the hand clamped down around his wrist. The word came to mind: Turk. 

_“Oh shit.”_

“Or maybe…,” the Turk mused, trailing off. He tilted his chin up so he could look at Tag over his cheekbone, over the red tattoos on his cheekbone. “Imma let ya go now, alright Blondie? No more of the slashy slash with the sword, yeah?” Tag nodded slightly, numbly. The Turk released him and stepped back. 

Tag moved slowly, straightening up and re-sheathing his sword over his shoulder. He did his best not to look ashamed. In the six months he’d been here, absorbing knowledge from snippets of conversation and the vague social cues he really couldn’t figure out, he knew that SOLDIERs, his people (supposedly), really did not like the Turks. 

He was… probably going to be in trouble for trying to behead a Turk. Tag felt his gut twisting uncomfortably. The Turk cocked an eyebrow at him, a catty smile dancing across his lips. “So, a jumpy little SOLDIER or… you noticed me tailing you…?”

Tag ducked his chin a little, looking away from the Turk. “Was that what it was?” Had this Turk been following him for the past two weeks? The thought was… equally unnerving and relieving. 

The Turk barked a laugh and stepped forward, throwing his arm over Tag’s shoulders and yanking Tag against his side. He was about half a head shorter than the Turk. Tag felt his body seize up from the unexpected contact. The Turk didn’t seem to notice as he dragged Tag along beside him. 

“Well that’s prefect, ‘cause we need a SOLDIER for this mission I’m doing, and most of ya are a bunch of boneheaded muscleheads with no spacial-awareness what-so-ever, which is kinda important.” Tag blinked. What? “You’re not busy right? You’ve been trying to shake me, badly I should add, for the past twenty minutes, so you better not be busy now.”

“What…?” Tag blinked, soundly confused.

The Turk sighed dramatically, but in a way that even Tag could catch the sarcasm. “I’m saying… ‘Congratulations SOLDIER! You get to play with the Turks,’ yo!” The Turk’s face split into a mildly maniacal grin. “Nice to meet ya, Blondie! The name’s Reno.”

~

Ward had gone out for a weekend in sector eight; Reed hoped he was enjoying his time off with a nice, pretty middle-aged lady, maybe one with a kid or two. Frankly, the poor guy needed a life outside of the Shinra infantry. And, if Ward found a nice lady to start hanging out with, maybe he’d stop skulking in their barracks, like a judgmental shadow. 

Reed fiddled with the file folder in his hands, thumbing at the edges. It held a new mission, to be given to one of his own. He was only substitute squad leader, only in charge in Ward’s absence. Mog and Chocobo, he hoped he was doing it okay.

Their squad didn’t have a name, yet. It didn’t really need one, technically; they were always identified by their squad number on any and all official documents. But Ward insisted the squad needed a name, something that defined them. He said it helped with team morale, team identity, and cohesion. Reed half thought he was nuts, even though all evidence spoke to the contrary. But still, Ward may have been a little too into this team thing. He really needed a girlfriend, or a hobby. 

Reed had never had any real, personal connection to either of his teams in the past. They’d all dissolved for no real reason, other than they had no real reason to stay together. He did like this team though, even if the rest of them made him feel like an old man. Maybe he was an old man, he was already thirty-one. Ward was older though, had already spent decades of his life in Shinra (not that Reed hadn’t done the same), so Reed hoped Ward was having a nice time with a nice middle-aged lady and got some time out of the barracks.

Reed stepped into their barracks and immediately wished Ward was here instead of whatever the hell he was doing instead. Aiji was hanging, upside down by his knees, from the top bunk, filming on his PHS. Sprawled out on the bottom bunk next to that one, Randy had Sparrow in a headlock under one arm, grinding his knuckles into his scalp, to wild protest, and Cloud’s head locked between his legs, also to wild protest. 

Reed took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh, feeling like his soul was leaving his body on his breath. Mog, he wished Ward was here. “Guys….” This was the fifth time since Ward had been gone that he’d walked in to find them doing something like this.

“Uh oh!” Aiji cackled, turning the PHS towards the doorway to film Reed. “The den mother’s back!”

“Oh, I’m den mother now? And here I thought you all were soldiers, not in daycare.” Reed flapped the file folder in his hand up and down in a ‘tsk tsk’ motion. 

“Not SOLDIERs yet!” Randy grinned, stopped grinding his knuckles against Sparrow’s head to reach down and ruffle Cloud’s hair. “Right Cloud?”

“I will remember this… when I’m a SOLDIER.” Cloud threatened, narrowing his eyes at Randy. He reached over Randy’s thigh to smack his hand until he withdrew it. 

“That sounds very threatening, sure,” Randy snarked, twisting his hips to make Cloud’s head bob up and down. “I am very scared right now.” 

“Careful, Randal! Cloud fights dirty. He might bite.” Sparrow’s voice was muffled by Randy’s elbow. His legs and half his torso were hanging over the edge of the bed, but at least he was touching the floor. 

Cloud made an exaggerated sound while he opened his mouth wide. “AAAHHH!” Reed couldn’t see it, but he could feel the tension from two of them staring each other down. He had a suspicion as to where Cloud was aiming and figured letting them duke it out wouldn’t end well.

“You bite my dick, Cloud, and I will hurt you.” Suspicion correct. Time to intervene.

“Put a hold on that, gentlemen,” Reed said in his most official sounding tone. He gracefully ignored Aiji’s snort. “Cloud, I have a mission for you.” 

The other four in the room perked up, all suddenly more interested in this mysterious new mission than they were in picking on each other. Cloud slipped out of Randy’s relinquished hold and trotted over to Reed, his hair thoroughly more ruffled than usual and something sparking in his bright blue eyes. “Mission?” he chirped.

Sparrow let out an undignified squawk as Randy hauled him back onto the bed and manhandled him into a new lock. “AAAHHH! Cloud! Save me!” 

“Don’t think I didn’t hear you call me ‘Randal,’ Birdbrain!”

“AAH! Mercy!!”

Reed stared at the other three for a moment, then gestured for Cloud to step out of the room. Cloud did so happily, throwing a snarky wave over his shoulder, earning a betrayed wail from Sparrow and an amused snort from Aiji.

Reed closed the door behind them and breathed a small sigh of relief. “Why do you two antagonize him?” he muttered under his breath, mostly to himself.

Cloud shrugged. “It’s just fun. We wouldn’t do it if we hated it, or it actually made him mad.” He ran a hand through his hair, doing very little to tame his wild locks. “So, what’s the mission?”

Reed looked at Cloud, really looked at him. He was still just a scrawny kid, barely sixteen, and already with a knack for finding trouble where there should be none. His uniform still barely fit him, but did better than the sweatpants currently hanging around his waist. With the oversized sweatpants, the tank top that barely stayed on his shoulders, and his socked feet, Cloud would have fit in at any teenager’s slumber party. Reed flipped the file folder around and offered it to Cloud. Somehow, even then, he knew he was going to regret this. 

“Well I was in a meeting just now, with about a dozen other squad leaders from our building, and they were looking for someone with familiarity with cold, high altitude and rural terrain.” 

Cloud blinked owlishly at him, then nodded decidedly, taking the folder form him. 

Reed tilted his head to the side, a little proud of himself. “So, as temporary squad leader, and apparently resident den mother, I volunteered you, for a mission accompanying SOLDIER First-Class Fair and… the General.” Reed could practically feel the moment Cloud stopped breathing. 

Cloud practically ripped the folder open, staring in shock and awe at the information page. Reed felt himself grinning, a little wider every second Cloud’s eyes widened and his mouth flapped uselessly. After a long moment, Cloud looked up at him with stars in his eyes. “Reed… Reed, holy shit…. Reed- I- _Thank you!_ I….”

“Don’t mention it, kid. Just don’t get into another helicopter crash and we’ll call it even.” Reed gave his shoulder a gentle tap. “You gotta tell us how it goes, okay? It’s not every day you get a mission with the great Silver General.”

“Yeah-,” Cloud breathed. “Yeah, not every day….” 

“Good luck, Brat. Don’t make trouble.”

~

Randal Luz woke up to the sound of quiet sobbing. For a moment, he couldn’t remember where he was, how old he was, or who he was and was not. Something-something Midgar. Something-something not. Randy sat up, rubbing at his eye blearily. It took him another minute before he realized that it was his squad mate who was crying in his sleep. 

Randy’s gaze flicked over the darkened room reflexively. They were still in their room at the inn, in Kalm, not in Midgar. There were six beds, the biggest room they had. Three beds between him and the door, Reed, Tag, Ward, door. Two beds to the window, Aiji, Sparrow, window.

The stilted sobs were coming from the door side, so he turned that way. Randy slid his legs off the side of the bed and nearly jumped out of his skin when he looked up to see two glowing eyes staring back at him out of the darkness. Animalistic eyes, reflective disks that hold a deep seated, instinctual fear of what monsters lurk in the dark. But the eyes blinked solemnly at him. Randy hissed through his teeth and stood up.

“Tag,” he murmured, half in greeting, half in reproach, as he slipped quietly around Reed’s bed. He looked down at Reed, two trails of tears glistening on his cheeks in the small bit of lantern light that slipped through the cracks in the curtains. “Should we wake him up?” 

Tag shrugged with one shoulder, not looking away from Reed. 

Randy chewed the inside of his lip. “Did… he wake you up?”

Tag shook his head. “Couldn’t sleep,” he murmured. Randy pursed his lips and gently patted Tag on the shoulder. 

Tag stared down at Reed, an unreadable expression on his face. “Wonder what he’s dreaming about….”

Randy shrugged and sat down on the edge of Tag’s bed. He could feel his own body heat reflecting off Tag and radiating in the space between them. Tag said he ran cold for a SOLDIER. Randy thought he just absorbed heat instead of giving it. 

After a moment, Tag leaned gently against his side, tucking his head against his arm. Randy blinked down at him. After a moment, he raised his hand and patted Tag’s head, the way he used to pat Cloud’s. The quiet moment passed like an eternity. Gods, he hated the quiet. Midgar was never quiet. The reactors made noise, the tower made noise, and the people made noise. Midgar was always moving. It felt alive. This stillness, this quiet… it felt dead.

“My roommate cries like that,” Tag said softly, breaking the deathly stillness of the quiet, “sometimes…. He says he dreams about the war, and his pa-… his- his close friends that died.” He shifted a little against Randy’s arm, almost like he was seeking comfort. 

Randy pursed his lips, feeling his eyebrows furrow. “What do you do… when he does that?”

Tag shrugged one shoulder, sitting up straight again. “He usually wakes himself up when he starts crying… or….” Tag dipped his head, and Randy could practically feel his mood dropping. “We should wake him.” 

Randy nodded and stood up. He crossed the step and a half of space between Tag’s bed and Reed’s, kneeling on the edge of the older man’s bed. Randy heard Aiji stirring, a couple beds in front of him, mumbling something unintelligible. They’d probably waited too long to not disturb the others. Randy gently shook Reed’s shoulder, trying to coax him out of sleep instead of jar him. 

Reed’s eyes shot open as a choked off cry of “Cloud!” rang from his lips. Randy felt his whole body flinch away, his hands rising up a little, already in fists. That was a very old reflex. He forced his fists down into the sheets a moment later, barely managing to hide them from the three pairs of eyes that were suddenly snapped awake.

Reed pressed the palm of his hand between his teeth and bit down, barely muffling the unrestrained, full force sobs that sounded just as painful as they did pained. He curled up into a ball, shaking like a dead leaf. Randy hesitated a moment, one hand raising just a little. He didn’t think Reed was actually awake. He didn’t know what to do.

Tag stepped forward; one hand raised in a mirror of Randy’s own hesitation. Reed caught sight of him and launched himself out of the bed, wrapping Tag in a tight hug that nearly pulled him off balance. Only SOLDIER strength and reflexes kept Tag on his feet. 

“I’m sorry, Cloud. I’m so so sorry,” Reed sobbed, wrapping himself around Tag as much as he could. “Cloud…! I’m sorry…! I’m so sorry…!” 

“It’s okay,” Tag said softly, with a tenderness in his voice that Randy had never heard from him before. He wrapped his arms around Reed and shuffled forward, gently laying Reed back down on the bed. But neither he or Reed let go, they probably wouldn’t for a while. Reed was clinging to him like Tag might dissolve into thin air if he couldn’t hold him together. His fingers were dug like claws into the back of Tag’s shirt.

Randy scooted back a little, then stood up, giving Tag room to kneel on the bed so he wasn’t bent over awkwardly. The others were up already. Randy felt Ward put a hand on the nape of his neck in a comforting gesture. Aiji turned on the table lamp on the other side of the room. Sparrow perched himself at the foot of Reed’s bed, looking conflicted.

Randy sighed softly and closed his eyes. He let Ward lead him to sit back down the edge of his bed, Ward sitting down next to him a moment later. Aiji stayed over on the other side of the room, alternating between his two favorite nervous ticks, chewing on his thumb nail and fiddling with his PHS. 

Randy decided he hated this. He tugged harshly on one of his braids, one with the yellow ribbon, feeling a painful pull on his scalp. This was unfair. Reed was always there for them, always the support that they needed, that he’d needed. But… here they were. Reed was right in front of him, hurting and in pain and Randy was doing absolutely nothing about it. 

Gods, he hated this.

“I’m so sorry, Cloud. It’s my fault…. I’m sure you hate me….”

“It’s not your fault,” Tag said softly, rubbing his palm in small circles over Reed’s back. His head moved up and down as he pressed his face deeper and deeper into Reed’s hair. “I don’t hate you.”

“It is my fault…,” Reed breathed shakily. “You- you /should/ hate me. It’s my fault. I’m- I’m the one that gave that mission….”

Randy felt a lump catch in his throat. Had Reed really…? Had he really been blaming himself all these years? It was ridiculous! He couldn’t have known-.

“It’s not your fault, Reed,” Sparrow said softly. “There should have been no safer place for him. You got him a mission with two Firsts! There- should have been nowhere safer….” Sparrow hung his head, looking down at his lap.

Reed didn’t seem to hear him, just cried into Tag’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry. I know you should hate me… but, please don’t….”

“I don’t hate you,” Tag said softly, “I can’t hate you.” He pressed his cheek a little harder against the side of Reed’s head. “I could never hate you, Reed.”

Reed’s back jumped under Tag’s hands, but the stiff sobs quieted. Little by little, the tension slid out of Reed. He slumped against Tag, barely holding on to him now. Randy felt his shoulders loosen with every minute he didn’t hear Reed _begging_. That was one thing out of very few that actually managed to turn his stomach. 

Randy closed his eyes and leaned against Ward’s shoulder a little. The warm steadiness was comforting, in a way he really couldn’t define. Randy felt Ward’s arm move, remove from his side. He only had an instant to feel regret, the awkward shame of an unspoken boundary pushed too far, before Ward’s arm wrapped around his shoulders, his hand settling on Randy’s farther arm. Randy felt himself relaxing in the tight sideways hug. That was familiar, even though the person giving it was different. 

A flash of memory, crossed his mind. A dark, claustrophobic space. The scent of mildew and illness. A small bit of comfort in a barely-there hug. It was stupid, probably, definitely, to miss his childhood home. If it could be called a home. But some part of him would always remember the sector four slums fondly, even though the fondness was interlaced with all different flavors of bitter pain. He remembered the sometimes, when the wind blew right, that he could imagine he smelled flowers.

~

Reed had apologized to all of them, when he’d properly woken up, but most insistently to Tag. Tag had shrugged it off, shaking his head. He said, “At least you didn’t flail. I tried to wake my roommate once and he woke up only after smacking me across the room.”

Sparrow had laughed and said something ‘witty’ about SOLDIERs not knowing their own strength. Tag had hummed noncommittally and dipped his head. “And you don’t even know the half of it….”

After Reed had paid for an apology breakfast, Aiji recommended they take as much money out of their Shinra accounts as they could, before someone caught on to their ‘going rogue’. Aiji, for some strange reason, had a separate account, which wasn’t connected to Shinra’s records, that they dumped all of their money into. They had a couple thousand Gil, after pooling all their infantry salaries together, but Tag’s addition had nearly tripled it. 

Reed had nearly gone bug eyed. And Sparrow’s jaw had dropped in indignation. “What the hell? How?!”

Tag flushed a surprising shade of red and mumbled, “SOLDIERs get paid a lot… and more for extra missions…. It’s just- it’s not like I have a lot to spend it on….” 

Randy felt his eyebrows twitch into a furrow. It sounded like there was an unspoken ‘anymore’ at the end of that. But Tag didn’t elaborate, or look like he really would if pushed. So, when Aiji started showing them where the best places to tuck their Gil in their clothing, he pushed the thought away and chimed in with his own hiding spots. 

~

Reed was still nervous and jumpy even after Kalm had disappeared behind the horizon. Randy was trying not to pry but it was obvious that there was something wrong. Reed being nervous was making Randy nervous. He twisted his braid around his fingers, inadvertently pulling the ribbon out of it bit by bit. By the time he realized that’s what he’d done, he had almost the entirety of his blue ribbon tied in a mess of a knot around his hand. Randy cursed under his breath and started trying to undo whatever he’d done with one hand. Which was… significantly difficult with his dominant hand tethered to his skull. 

They were walking more or less single file, heading across the Kalm planes on foot. The store owner they’d asked had said Chocobo Bill’s farm was little more than half a day’s walk across the planes, vaguely south-east. He’d also been very helpful, or more accurately, rather nosy and talkative about a blond SOLDIER he’d seen heading that way the evening before. 

“A blond guy in a SOLDIER uniform – maybe, I mean it looked like one, but we don’t see a lotta SOLDIERs ‘round here, ya know? He had this big-ass big-ass-sword too, long as he was tall, maybe even more than that! And real thick too. I’da thought it was a metal door if the edge weren’t sharp.”

Ward and Sparrow led the train, Sparrow a pace and a half behind Ward, and a little to the side. Aiji was close behind them, cradling his new spear with a very interesting kind of tenderness. Randy didn’t know if it was because it was new, it was cool, or if it reminded him of his mom, but he was happy for Aiji, at the very least.

Reed was in the middle of the train, a good distance behind Aiji, leaving a significant gap. His head was drooping and his shoulders were hunched. And he kept sneaking glances over his shoulder, towards Kalm, like Randy wouldn’t notice. 

Randy was hovering, he knew he was. He kept trying to close the gap between Reed and himself, but he didn’t know what he’d say when he did. Anything he thought of sounded awkward, at best. It didn’t help that Randy kept feeling Tag’s eyes on the back of his neck. Tag had said it’d be better, safer, to keep them from getting flanked by something that knew how to sneak in the open field. But it seemed like he just wanted to walk in back to make sure he could see all of them at once, for whatever reason.

Randy took a deep breath and scurried up to walk next to Reed. Reed jumped a little, looking a little warry and a little curious. Randy chewed the inside of his lip for a moment, then tilted his head. “So… that SOLDIER… from last night…?”

Reed blinked, straightening up. “Yes?”

Randy hesitated. He hadn’t really planned out what he was going to say…. “Do you- do you really think it might be Cloud? All the rest could be coincidental; the sword could be lighter than it looks, or he could just be stronger, fake SOLDIER uniforms are everywhere, over and under the plate, but… if he _smells_ like a SOLDIER too, whatever that means…,” he trailed of, almost nervous about voicing what it could mean.

Cloud… Cloud hadn’t gotten accepted into SOLDIER, so… how could he smell like one? Randy’s imagination was running wild, but no cohesive ideas really formed. 

“I don’t know,” Reed said softly. 

“He wouldn’t be listed as MIA if he was in SOLDIER. And he would have talked to us sometime!”

“Undercover mission?” Reed supplied. 

“For five years?”

Reed shrugged.

“First-Class Fair and the General would have to be on it too… but they couldn’t keep them for that long.”

“Especially not the General,” Reed agreed. “He’s a bit too… noticeable for undercover work….”

Randy got a mental image of General Sephiroth dying his silver hair black and putting in colored contacts and civilian clothes and almost snorted. He could peg Fair for doing something undercover, but not the General. 

“It’s suspicious,” Randy sighed. “It’s so suspicious.”

“Like the Newbie Massacre all over again,” Reed mumbled, looking down at the ground in front of them. 

“Yeah,” Randy sighed, rubbing the space between his eyebrows. “Gods and shit, it really does not look good for Shinra….”

Reed nodded solemnly. “I hate it too you know; I’ve spent over half my life with Shinra and… more and more… recently things just keep….”

“Yeah.”

They walked in a dour silence for a while, neither one of them apparently in the mood to strike up a happier conversation. Then-

“What’s the Newbie Massacre?”

Randy blinked, his head jerking to look over his shoulder. Reed practically jumped the rest of the way to the Chocobo Farm. Tag tilted his head a little. He was walking just a few paces behind them now, but Randy was sure he’d been further back before, too far to hear-.

“Goddamned SOLDIER hearing…,” he muttered.

“Wait, that’s true?!” Reed gaped.

“Yeah…?” Tag blinked. “Did you… Did I forget to- Was I not supposed to hear that?” He ducked his head a little sheepishly and slowed his pace, starting to fall back.

“Wait! No, Tag…!” Randy turned around and snatched his arm. Tag let him pull him back forward. Reed was flushing, not looking at him. “It’s fine,” Randy huffed. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the others turn back around. Aiji adjusted his hold on his spear. 

Randy stepped to the side, tugging Tag forward to walk between him and Reed. “The Newbie Massacre… happened just a couple months ago. About four-hundred infantry shipped out and… well-”

“Massacre,” Tag supplied, nodding slightly. 

“Scuttlebutt is they went after something that escaped from one of the science department’s outside labs,” Reed murmured. “They managed to kill whatever it was. But…”

“Why didn’t they send SOLDIERs?” Tag asked suddenly. “If it was that dangerous…?”

Randy and Reed both shook their heads. “No idea,” Randy shrugged. 

“The weirdest part though…,” Reed mused, “is that they were all newbies, every single one. Nobody that had been with Shinra more than three years. Even the officers were all new. It was so weird and we never got an explanation….” Tag nodded slightly, chewing his lip.

“I guess you didn’t hear about it in SOLDIER,” Randy said, trying not to sound exasperated. Tag shook his head solemnly. “Not even from your Turk friends?”

Tag shook his head again. “I think- I know they finished a big mission a couple months ago…. I- I think they failed… they’ve been kind of upset lately. But that was a Turk mission out of Midgar, so… I’m not privy.” Randy hummed, pressing his lips together. Tag looked at him from the corner of his eye, mimicking his expression. 

“At least we weren’t called in for it,” Randy muttered wryly. 

“That’s a bit harsh, Randy…,” Reed mumbled. Randy shrugged. Fact of life. People died. He was just glad it wasn’t anybody he cared about. This time.

~

Randy didn’t think he’d walked so long in his life. He had only paced his patrol shifts, which were never more than a few hours, and never quite this strenuous. He hadn’t gone to Wutai, but apparently this was what it felt like when they’d had to march all day. Reed was very enthusiastically comparing the two, and made it very clear that this particular journey was even more excruciating than any time he’d marched in Wutai. 

“At least Wutai had trees…! Trees give shade! And we took breaks every couple of hours…!” 

“Stop whining, Reed!” Aiji called over his shoulder. “Or at least keep it to yourself!”

“Ward…!” Reed whined louder. “We gotta stop some time! Lunch break! Water break! Anything!”

“Oh my gods, Reed, Shut up!”

“We’re almost there,” Randy groaned. “Just hold out just a little longer….”

“I am not built for stamina.” Reed grumbled. Apparently, he got cranky when he was tired.

“I know what’ll cheer you up!” Sparrow called back. “I knnnoooooooow an annoying sooooooong! If you do tooooooooo then sing aloooooong!” he shouted more than he sang.

“NONE OF THAT!” Aiji snapped, brandishing his spear threateningly at Sparrow. “Absolutely none of that!” 

Randy groaned to himself as Sparrow kept screeching the lyrics to that song. Whoever taught it to him deserved to be shot. Aiji was trying to yell over the screeching and Reed was saying something he couldn’t hear. Randy glanced behind them and saw Tag walking much further behind them than before. He honestly couldn’t blame him. 

Randy didn’t see it, but suddenly, all the others froze mid-step. Randy jerked himself to a stop half a step later. He looked forward, seeing Ward standing facing them, his hands on his hips. There was an expression of ‘I am so beyond pissed off that I am calm again’ on his face. That was… scary. “Sparrow. Aiji.” he said sharply. The two of them flinched. “Stop screeching.” They dipped their heads. “Reed. Stop whining.” Reed looked sheepish as the blush spread across his cheeks.

Randy almost flinched when Ward fixed his stony gaze on him. “Randy…. Stop planning murder.” How did he always know…? It wasn’t fair.

“And Tag.” Ward looked back at him; the single, miniscule eyebrow twitch the only expression on his face. “Stop that.” 

Randy glanced behind him, seeing Tag shuffling his feet and looking sheepish. What had he been doing? Randy had no idea. 

“Listen,” Ward sighed. “Yes, we are all tired and stressed, but this is going to get worse before it gets better. We cannot be causing more conflict for each other. We are soldiers, all of us. We know how to work as a team; we know our team. We are our team. That hasn’t stopped just because we’re not on a mission from Shinra. We have to count on each other, now more than ever.”

Randy pursed his lips. Sparrow hung his head while Aiji shuffled sheepishly. Ward was right, as always.

Ward raised his chin. “We are the Lords of Strife and we have our mission. We will not self-destruct under pressure. We will not stop until we have reached the end. And we will not abandon our team. If anyone can’t abide by that, go back to Midgar. Right now.” Randy shook his head. There was no way he was leaving. He saw the others do the same. 

Ward nodded. “Then we will carry on with our mission with our own brand of professionalism.” Randy felt his lips twitch upwards. “And, we will not… get on each other’s nerves.” Ward fixed a heavy stare on each one of them. “Understood?” 

Randy snapped into a salute, in time with the others. “Yes sir!” they said in unison. 

Ward smiled, his shoulders relaxing. “Good….” He turned and restarted the quick marching pace, calling back over his shoulder, “Then let’s get to the farm before we miss Cloud again.” 

~

They had missed Cloud again. Randy barely resisted the urge to slam his head against the wooden pillar to his left. He was hot, tired, and now exceedingly frustrated. They had apparently missed them by a couple hours, meaning Cloud and his group had left the farm only a little after their squad had left Kalm that morning. Had he traveled all night? He must have.

Sparrow was flopped over the railing of the farmhouse’s porch, arms dangling freely and swaying in the breeze. Aiji had sprawled himself over one of the porch chairs and looked just about as limp. Reed, also sprawled over a porch chair, looked slightly more dead. Tag… looked perfectly fine. He was standing next to Ward, almost at attention. And Ward looked as stoic and rock-like as ever. Randy sighed under his breath and fell sideways, his shoulder landing hard against the pillar he still wanted to slam his head against. He let his head fall against it instead. Though, it didn’t make him feel better. 

“Do you know where they were headed?” Ward asked, the tiredness leaching into his voice.

“Yeah,” Bill nodded, scratching the white stubble on his jaw. “They headed through the marsh; towards Junon, I think they said. They took my chocobos to avoid the zoloms.”

“Zoloms?” Tag chirped, tilting his head. A murmured echo came from the porch chairs.

“They’re like… big snakes. Real big ones.” Bill nodded his head like he was agreeing with himself. Tag hummed thoughtfully. “It’s best to use a chocobo to cross the marsh. Zoloms can sense tremors from footsteps. Chocobos are the only things fast enough to slip past ‘em in the marsh.”

Aiji suddenly made a choking sound, like he was suddenly dying. Randy tilted his head, eyes widening a little. “Yeah!” Aiji squeaked, looking up from his PHS. “Those are some big snakes.” He looked up at Ward, his eyes wide and almost pleading. “Let’s get the chocobos.” 

Ward nodded, turning back to look at Bill. 

Bill shook his head. “Can’t rent ‘em till tomorrow.”

Sparrow let out a high-pitched whine. “Why’s that…?”

Bill raised his eyebrows at him, then chuckled lowly. “You remind me of my grandson when he was younger.” He shook his head. “The real bad monsters ‘round here get more active at night. If I let you leave now, I’d have no guarantee all my birds could get back safe before they start waking up. It’s just too late, boys. Sorry.” 

Aiji hummed thoughtfully. “It’s a straight shot with a rider, but when they’re turned loose….”

“Chocobos are curious things. Easy to sidetrack.” Bill tilted his chin up, eyebrows raising. “And that’d be the last bird from the other group. Point made; I suppose.” He hummed, lips curling into a smile.

“We understand,” Ward said, nodding his head.

“Please tell me we don’t have to walk back to Kalm to find a someplace to sleep….” Sparrow murmured, probably louder than he meant to. 

Bill chuckled. “I wouldn’t do that to you any more than I would to a chocobo. You boys can stay here tonight and leave in the morning, after morning set up.”

“We appreciate it.”

Bill waved his hand. “Can’t have the monsters eating customers, now can I?” He chuckled. “The guest rooms are inside, to the left. Feel free to putz around the farm. The birds like the attention.” He turned and picked up a burlap bag, tossing it over his shoulder. “Imma take care of this birdie wondering home late.” Bill walked off towards the pen and stables. 

Randy watched him leave for a minute, then turned back to the others. “Set up in the guest rooms?” 

Ward nodded. “Sounds good.”

“The Junon harbor is shut down,” Aiji chirped. “Nothing’s getting out until after the inauguration parade tomorrow. Apparently, the new President Shinra wants a parade through upper Junon, so everything’s docked until afternoon.” 

“So at least Cloud’s not getting much further ahead,” Randy hummed, chewing the inside of his lip. 

“Come on, Reed,” Aiji huffed, kicking the bottom of Reed’s boot. “Time to move.”

“Roll me. I can’t get up.” Aiji kicked his boot again. 

“Up!” 

“Bite me.” 

Sparrow slunk over to Reed and grabbed his arm. “Come on…! Upie! Upie! Up!” 

Reed wheezed as Sparrow and Aiji manhandled him onto his feet. They started dragging him into the farmhouse. “We’ll join you in a bit,” Ward called after them. Randy blinked curiously. Sparrow threw a wave of acknowledgement over his shoulder, kicking the door shut behind them. 

Randy tilted his head curiously. Ward looked down at Tag. “If you want to go see the chocobos…,” he started. Tag jumped a little, then flushed brightly. Randy blinked in surprise. He hadn’t noticed anything. Tag shifted his weight and shrugged. “We’re not in a hurry. Go ahead,” Ward insisted, jerking his chin towards the birds. Tag blinked up at him for a moment, then scurried down the porch steps and off towards the fenced pen. Ward smiled slightly, looking towards Randy. “Want to join?”

Randy felt a grin flicker across his lips. “Yeah, just give me a minute to set my stuff down.” Ward nodded and lumbered off after Tag. Randy watched him walking for a moment, then slipped inside the house. He’d see if the others wanted to see the chocobos too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this fic is gonna follow the events of the original FFVII, cause like... yeah. But there'll be some worldbuilding spoilers for the remake. But, yeah an original game semi-canon-compliant fic. '-' bb There we go.
> 
> As always, feel free to leave comments, even if they're just quotes of a favorite line and/or a bunch of emojis/emoticons. ^<^ 
> 
> (New chapters hopefully coming out quicker now that school's done, but we'll see.)


	5. The Chocobo Farm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will have more time after summer classes end, I say, then not working on the story I've been meaning to and that people are waiting for.... >_>
> 
> Thank you all for being so patient!

“Why do you braid your hair?”

Randy blinked, looking up from the line of colored ribbons laid out across his bed. Cloud was peeking over the edge of his bunk, hanging upside down so his nose was just barely visible over the edge. Randy huffed a laugh, a crooked grin springing to his face. “Your face is gonna turn red.” Cloud narrowed his eyes at him challengingly, making no moves to move from where he hung. Randy rolled his eyes, turning back to the ribbons. “I donno. One of my brothers started doing it when we were young, so I just… kept doing it.”

Randy stared at the ribbons for a moment, then picked up the dark green one, the one that reminded him of Aleks. He started braiding it into his hair. “Though… I guess it’s more… a way to remember now….” 

“To remember?” Cloud’s head tilted. His face was already starting to turn red from hanging upside down. 

“Remember… people, promises, stuff like that. And ribbons are pretty cheap, so….” Randy shrugged. “Easier to keep than a diary or whatever.”

There was movement from behind him, then a soft thump as Cloud dropped to the ground. A moment later, Cloud was peering over Randy’s shoulder like a curious baby bird. He pointed at a dark grey ribbon. “What does that one mean?”

Randy picked it up, cradling it with his fingers. “Midgar, my home. I’ve never lived anywhere else, so… that one reminds me this is where I’ve come from.” It reminded him of the slums of sector four, the people he’d grown up with, the people that were his home. 

Cloud tilted his head slightly, making a soft humming sound in his throat. “And that one?” He pointed to a muted yellow one. 

“Lost friends….”

“Oh.” Cloud sat back on his heals, tilting his head as his eyes flickered across the line of ribbons. “We… Nibbleheim had something like that. Or, well not really…. Nevermind.”

“What?” Randy twisted, looking back at Cloud.

“Nothing,” Cloud shook his head. Randy sat silently, raising both eyebrows. Cloud was stubborn, but Randy could win any waiting game. Cloud flushed, chewing his lip and looking away. Ah, so he knew he couldn’t win this. “In- in Nibbleheim… we have stories about old gods and heroes, stuff like that…. I guess- that just reminded me of that.”

Randy turned a little, tilting his head. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Like what?”

Cloud bit his lip, looking back at him. “Um….”

“I’ll tell you one if you tell me one,” Randy proposed, twisting his braid around his finger. 

Cloud paused his lips, then nodded sharply. “Uh, one of my favorites is about Fenrir, the wolf that guards the gates of the afterlife-.”

~

Missions with the Turks were never boring. They did have routine missions, obviously, those were the ones they took him on, but they were never boring. And missions with Reno… tended to be far less routine than they had any right to be. The man just created chaos where ever he went, like it was his purpose in life. 

Tag stared down, suspiciously, at the necklace Reno had plopped into his hand. It was small, a silver wire pendant with a gold, not yellow, gold materia that sparkled up at him. Reno bounced his eyebrow up, putting his hands on his hips and cocking them to the side, waiting impatiently. Tag sighed softly, thought it wasn’t really a sigh, and unclasped his earring, slipping it into his pocket. He brought the necklace to his neck and fastened it, feeling the warm tingling feeling of activating materia washing across his skin. He blinked and suddenly, he was a completely different person. 

The materia’s illusion was real enough to convince every one of his senses that it wasn’t an illusion. Tag examined the wardrobe first. Knowing Reno, that was the safer option. 

The shirt was sleeveless, black, and with a collar that swan-dived downwards, to about halfway down his sternum. One leg of the skintight leather pants was completely missing, leaving only bare skin that felt surprisingly warm despite the night air. The boots were mismatched. The one on the leg with the pant leg looked about the same as his SOLDIER issued one, tight combat style, except with much more of a heel, making him a few inches taller. The other was a folded down boot, showing off more of his bare leg.

Tag glared pointedly down at the bright, candy red belts that decorated him. Two were wrapped around his thigh (the one with the pantleg, of course), two at his waist, one that hit most of the beltloops and one that hung mostly freely, one around his bicep, and he could feel one wrapped around his throat. He couldn’t see that one, but he could feel it, like a collar. 

The final addition to the outfit, to Reno’s very amusing prank, was the hair. The materia had extended his hair and twisted it into twin braids that fell over his shoulders to tickle his collar bone. Those were already distracting. Those were not going to stay. Tag batted at the twin braids for a moment, then pulled the hair ties from the ends of the braids, unraveling them with a swirl of his fingers. 

“Aww!” Reno protested, barely containing his snickers. “Those were my favorite part.”

“I look like a striper,” Tag retorted, pulling the sudden bulk of loose hair into a low ponytail, tying it with one of the hair ties.

“It’s battle leather.”

“I’m missing forty-eight percent of my pants.”

“It’s fashionable.” Reno tilted his head, watching Tag’s fingers intently as he twisted his hair into a single braid that hung down the back. “Seriously?”

“The braid idea wasn’t bad, but the style would be distracting.”

Reno rolled his eyes. “And other than that?”

Tag let the finished braid slip from his fingers, tied with the other recycled hair tie. He tilted his head, considering the outfit from an outside perspective, ignoring how the tightness and exposure of the clothes made him feel personally. It was certainly nothing absurd for Wall Market, then again, few things were. Tag got the feeling that, despite the pigtail braids, Reno had actually put a lot of effort into making it. He hummed thoughtfully before responding. “Not bad.” He flashed a smirk towards Reno, who responded with one of his own.

“I _am_ actually good at my job, yo.”

“I know.” Tag huffed in a small approximation of a laugh. He felt a lot different. He was supposed to act different too. Somehow, he suspected anyone who chose to wear this, wasn’t the least bit self-conscious. “So…?”

Reno chuckled and pulled something small out of his pocket. He slipped the dangling earring, that matched Tag’s pendant, into his ear and roughly ruffled his hair. Almost instantly, the bright red of his hair disappeared. A wave of ink ran down and through his long pony tail, turning it dark. The tattoos by his eyes stayed red though. His Turk suit disappeared under battle leather pants, with both legs present, and a light-colored jacket that hung open over a white shirt that mirrored the one Tag was wearing. 

Tag tilted his head, scanning the new outfit, somehow… he felt like he’d gotten duped. Reno grinned at him, tilting his head. “Yo’ liking what you’re seeing?” Tag rolled his eyes, long since used to the weird teasing that everyone in Shinra seemed to partake in. At least the Turks usually only bantered with words. A SOLDIER was far more likely to knock him down before the teasing started.

“Remind me again why we’re bothering to use the front door when you have keys to the back.”

“Cause it’s fun, Blondie,” Reno huffed. “Ah- though maybe don’t mention it to Tsung.” 

“Now why would I be talking to _your_ boss about _your_ mission?”

Reno waved his hand dismissively, “Ne’er mind. But anyways, I already got everything all set up, so all you have to worry your pretty SOLDIER boy head about is winning. And, well, actually sticking to your cover.”

Tag raised an eyebrow. “And that is…?”

Reno flashed a grin, his eyes lighting up. “You are ‘The Storm, Squall Lightheart,’ of course. A showy, exclusive fighter who’s come to Midgar’s own Corneo Coliseum, drawn by its infamous prestige to test his skills, for a one night only show!” He held up one finger to punctuate his point.

“Uh… huh….” Tag raised an eyebrow. “Then who are you supposed to be?”

“Your wonderful partner and better half,” Reno grinned, tapping Tag on the tip of his nose. “‘The Player, Chance Ral’lette.”

“You named yourself Chance Roulette?”

“Ral’lette,” he corrected, putting extra emphasis on the ‘a’. 

Tag hummed, cocking his head to the side. “Does your Partner know you’re seeing me on the side?”

Reno scoffed, waving his hand, “Rude likes you enough to share. He hates Wall Market anyways. The neon hurts his eyes. Now, I worked very hard on these; I’ll have you know. So you better be up for it, Blondie. I’m using Chance as stress relief after tonight, so make me look good.” 

Tag snickered. “You sure you need my help for that?”

“See? He can be trained! Good boy!” Reno stepped around him, heading for the door. He smacked Tag’s, no, Squall’s braid as he passed. “Let’s get started. Can’t keep our audience waiting.”

Tag, no, Squall, tilted his head and walked after him. It took Tag a moment to find Squall’s stride, something confident, sure, almost predatory. Squall was a warrior who looked for challenges. He was here to win.

The lights were bright in the ring. The sandy wooden planks under his boots crunched as he walked. They crowd let out jeers and called for blood. _“Not very friendly, are they?”_ Squall mused to himself, eyes flickering across the rows of spectators. He saw a viewing box higher up. He saw movement in it, but couldn’t see how many people were actually in there. _“A judges’ box? Or high-class seating.”_

Chance led the way to the center of the ring, swaying in a way that made his ponytail flick behind him, like it was the real tail of a predator. His hands were on his hips, dangerously close to his electric rod. He was ready to jump into a fight. Someone in the crowd yelled something about cocky attitudes, but Squall knew that nothing in his partner’s stride was unearned. He’d proven every inch of his ego, time and time again. Unless of course that comment had been directed at him, but he was more ‘stone-faced’ than ‘cocky’.

Squall tilted his head, coldly regarding the eight men that walked out of the door on the other side of the ring. Chance stood at his side, hands on his hips. “Eight against two?” he huffed. “Pretty bad odds.” 

“Poor them,” Squall murmured. Chance barked a laugh, throwing his head back. 

“Yeah… ‘Poor them’.”

~

Brandon Ward couldn’t help the soft smile as he sauntered towards the chocobo pen. As much as he wished they could have caught up to Cloud by now, he was a little bit glad that they could spend the rest of the day here, and not have to run through in a hurry. It had been a long time since most of them had any real time off. 

The last ‘vacation’ any of them had taken… was when Aiji had taken an extra few days on his bi-monthly trip to the undercity to visit with his mother. And… that had been a while ago. 

Ward hummed thoughtfully to himself. Yeah, this would be good for them. It wouldn’t help them get to Cloud, but maybe they could catch him in Junon. Aiji had mentioned the inaugural parade blocking all the ships from Junon. Ward did some mental mapping, tracing paths from here to Junon. If they bypassed the Mithril Mines and went straight to Junon….

Tag was leaning over the fence to the chocobo pen by the time Ward walked up, mimicking their sounds and head movements. Ward felt his lips twitch up. Tag looked… content, happy even. 

Tag grinned and let out a happy sounding ‘Kweh’, a reinvigorated energy around him. His gold hair glinted in the sunlight as he bobbed his head. One chocobo, a black one by the other side of the pen, lifted its head and stared at him, holding almost perfectly still. The yellow bird just in front of Tag ruffled its feathers and bobbed its head in response.

“I think they like you,” Ward chuckled as he leaned against the fence next to Tag.

“Kweh,” Tag mused, bobbing his head in something more like a nod than a head bob. 

Ward looked down at him from the corner of his eyes, then laughed softly to himself. It was kind of endearing how Tag could communicate without words sometimes, and sometimes he didn’t need. Whenever he forgot himself, he seemed to the default to sounds and slight movements. Though, when he was just feeling fuzzy, defaulting to speaking Wutaian seemed to be an acceptable second. 

Ward couldn’t begin to theorize why Tag did it, but he was kind of proud that his squad had adapted to it so well. Both for Tag’s sake and for an illustration of how his squad adapted to different circumstances. Sometimes it seemed like Sparrow and Randy could have an entire conversation with Tag while he was zoned out and only speaking in sounds. Sparrow spoke noise and gesture better than Wutaian at least. 

The yellow chocobo hopped from foot to foot and lifted its wings. Tag tilted his head and cooed softly in return. Ward couldn’t help the amused feeling that bubbled up in his chest, it looked like a little dance. He wondered if that was something the farm owners had trained it to do, or if it was something instinctual. 

A few moments later, Randy and Aiji came over to the fence. “Sparrow is taking a power nap with Reed,” Aiji reported. “They’ll be about fifteen minutes.”

“That’s fine,” Ward hummed. “We’re not in a hurry.” Aiji leaned against the fence, one foot propped the bottom rung, laying his crossed arms over the top rung. Randy leaned back against the fence, turning his face upwards, soaking up the sun. Ward closed his eyes for a moment. It was so quiet here, peaceful. It reminded him a little of his childhood in Banora. All that was missing was the scent of dumb-apples. 

“I never thought I’d say it, but I think I’ve missed chocobos,” Aiji mused to himself. Ward cracked open an eye curiously. Aiji blinked, then sucked his lips into his mouth like he’d ate something unexpectedly sour. Apparently, he hadn’t actually meant to say that. “I mean… it’s just….” He flushed, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. “There’s a chocobo stable down in Wall Market…. I… worked there, before Shinra. I just never thought chocobos could make me nostalgic….”

Ward hummed, nodding slightly. “I know the feeling.”

Randy hummed, dipping his head in agreement. Tag tilted his head, still gazing out over the chocobos. Aiji chuckled softly. “Gods, I really do miss it….” He leaned forward, bending so he could look at Tag. “What about you, Niisan?”

“Hnn?” Tag responded, seemingly in a daze. He blinked a couple times, then looked back at Aiji. “Huh?”

“What was your home like growing up?” Aiji asked without hesitation. 

“Oh uh….” Tag tilted his head, his eyes getting a far off look in them, though it wasn’t a spacey look this time, just remembrance. “We lived by the edge of the forest…. It was… chilly- all year round. But never really got cold until winter.”

“We?” Aiji prompted.

“My-” Tag’s eyebrows furrowed and he pressed his lips together. His shoulders hunched a little as he dropped his head. “Yeah. My parents and me…,” he murmured. “While they were still-.” His hand waved limply.

Aiji blinked, a small look of shock crossing his face. He opened his mouth, then shut it silently, looking away shamefully. Randy sniffed, scrubbing at his nose with the back of his hand. “My brothers and I lived in Sector Four, in the slums. I think Harrow is still working at that materia shop by the wall. It smells like someone tried to polish the wood floor with coffee instead of wood polish.” 

“Who the hell would polish wood floors in the slums?” Aiji muttered, eyebrows knitting together.

“The owner’s just like that,” Randy shrugged. “Harrow always ends up smelling like he showered in coffee ‘cause of that.” 

“Think I know some SOLDIERs who might actually try that…,” Tag muttered to himself, then continued in a louder voice, “Maybe he’s trying to get rid of the Mako smell.”

“Mako has a smell?” Aiji raised an eyebrow. 

“Refined Mako does.” Tag shrugged. “Natural Mako springs smell different.”

“How the fuck to you know-,” Aiji started at the same time Randy spoke up.

“What does it smell like?” 

Tag tiled his head in thought. “Refined mako is- sharp, kinda iron-y. Like a mix of materia and blood… maybe.”

“Well that’s kinda horrifying,” Randy huffed. “Don’t tell Sparrow, he might freak.”

Tag shrugged nonchalantly. “You just get used to it, I guess. Or maybe it’s just another weird SOLDIER thing….” He laid his head down on his arms, tucking the bridge of his nose into his inner-elbow. 

“You’re not that weird,” Randy said, leaning further back over the fence. “I grew up around some weird ass people. You’re fine.” Aiji hummed and nodded in agreement. Ward gently patted Tag’s back, feeling him huff in return.

~

Bill had passed by not long after, heading back to the farm house with two workers trailing after him. He’d said they were welcome to jump into the pen, but he held no responsibility for what happened if they did. Aiji had warned them that chocobos could be territorial, depending on half a dozen factors that he had listed, but Ward hadn’t managed to catch. So, they decided they were better off staying outside the pen. 

Tag had hopped up to sit on the fence though, gazing silently at the horizon. It wasn’t quite towards either Midgar or Kalm, mostly north but a little west, so Ward didn’t think he was looking at anything in particular. 

“The air smells so fresh here,” Tag remarked after a long comfortable silence. 

Ward cracked his eyes open, wondering if he’d managed to drift off standing up. He felt drowsy, but it couldn’t have been that long. The light and shadows looked about the same, and Sparrow and Reed hadn’t shown up. So, it couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes since Aiji and Randy had joined them….

Aiji looked up from his PHS, from the video of the chocobos he was filming on it. “I guess it would, after what you said Midgar smells like.”

Tag hummed, dipping his head. He drummed his fingers against his thighs in time to an unheard tune. Ward watched the black chocobo he’d noticed earlier pacing around something on the ground. It looked like a mound of dirt, or maybe a hole. Did chocobos dig holes? It squawked angrily, maybe protectively, at the other chocobos when they came too close. 

Ward was about to ask Aiji, their chocobo expert by default, what he thought about it, when Randy sneezed. Loudly. 

For a split-second Ward thought a bomb must have gone off. He felt his whole body shudder with tension as afterimages of bright flashes danced across the back of his eyeballs. Light. Sounds loud like thunder, cracking lightning. The roar of artificial monsters, designed to kill. Someone shouted something lost in the noise.

With a small yelp, something red and black and gold and flailing fell past the corner of his vision. Ward blinked sharply, suddenly seeing chocobos spread out in front of him like someone had lifted a veil off his eyes. He groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose as he forced himself to take deep breaths. Aiji swore loudly, “Shiva’s _fuck!_ Randy, what the hell!”

Tag peeped helplessly from where he’d fallen backwards into the pen. Ward looked down at him. “You alright, Tag?” Tag nodded, wheezing as he sat up. He didn’t seem like he’d gotten the wind knocked out of him or anything like that, so Ward looked back at Aiji and Randy, trying to calm his heart.

Aiji had a hand fisted in his shirt, over his own heart, and was breathing a little heavier than usual. Randy was rubbing furiously at his nose, looking sheepish behind his hand. “I think I might be allergic to feathers….” He mumbled half-heartedly. 

“A little warning would be appreciated,” Aiji wheezed, dropping his hand. “Like some build up, not just exploding like Ifrit fireball-ed your ass from behind!” That was oddly specific, but not unexpected. Ward let out a long sigh, feeling his shoulders relax. He’d long since gotten used to Midgardian metaphors. It was as amusing as it was endearing. 

Ward raised his head, peering over Aiji and Randy’s shoulders, towards the farm house. “Ah, Reed.” He straightened up, watching Reed meander his way across the grass. Aiji perked up and turned, throwing up a wave towards Reed and Sparrow, who jogged to catch up to him. 

A surprised yelp in a familiar voice from behind him really wasn’t doing Ward’s heart any favors. Ward managed to turn in time to see a swath of black feathers out of the corner of his eye. The next moment the black chocobo was halfway across the pen, it’s wriggling red, black, and gold prize held tightly in its beak. 

“Uh…,” Aiji gasped, his mouth hanging part way open in bland shock and awe. His eyebrows rose as far as they were able to, eyes wide with disbelief. 

Randy did a double take, his eyes flickering between the spot on the ground where Tag had just been and the escaping chocobo. “What… just happened…?”

“I… I think Tag just got kidnapped by a chocobo.” Aiji said in a stunned voice. He blinked several times, like his brain was trying to catch up. Then he started walking around the outside of the pen, keeping his eyes on the black chocobo. Randy and Ward followed him, both in semi-stunned silence.

When they got to the other side of the pen, close enough to see, Ward bit back a sigh of exasperation. Poor Tag looked so lost, sitting in the chocobo’s nest, blinking in confusion with his eyebrows furrowed as the chocobo cooed and pranced around him. Ward pinched the bridge of his nose. 

“Aiji…,” Randy started, “What is that chocobo doing to Tag?”

Aiji folded his hands and pressed his face into them, taking very deep breaths. “I think….” His voice sounded strained. Ward looked at him worriedly. “I think…,” he tried again, “that chocobo thinks Tag’s another chocobo….”

Randy’s eyebrows shot up, eyes going wide. “A choco-…”

Aiji leaned his forearms against the fence, shaking like a leaf. “Oh gods-!” he choked. Randy tucked his hand over his mouth, trying to swallow the laughter that was bouncing his shoulders. 

Ward looked between the two of them, then let out a tired sigh. This was going to be an ordeal, wasn’t it? Well… might as well. He settled in to watch the show. He couldn’t do much to save him anyways. 

As the chocobo turned, ruffling its feathers proudly, Tag hesitantly stood up and wandered over to the fence where they were standing. “Does… anyone know- Euh?!” He squeaked as the chocobo carefully picked him up by the suspenders of his uniform and carried him back over to its nest.

Aiji snorted into his fist, doing very badly at hiding his amusement. 

“What the hell?” Sparrow gawked, jogging to a stop by the fence. 

“Seems someone has a crush on our SOLDIER,” Randy supplied, jabbing his finger towards Tag and the bird. Ward really wished he had coffee right now. 

Sparrow sputtered, choked, then started laughing loudly. Very helpful. He doubled over, clutching his stomach. “Okay- that’s- psshhhh!” He straightened up enough to watch the chocobo drag Tag back over to its nest and drop him inside. “Looks like Tag finally got a girlfriend!” he called, definitely loud enough for Tag to hear. Tag shot him an annoyed glare as the chocobo shoved a glittery stick of some kind towards his face.

Aiji wheezed, clutching the fence to keep himself upright. Randy rolled his eyes at Sparrow. Reed sighed sympathetically, shaking his head.

Tag rolled out of the nest and scurried towards the other chocobos, probably planning to use them as obstacles to delay the black one. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. The black chocobo caught up to him almost immediately and snatched him off his feet, trotting back towards the nest with a smug strut. 

Aiji coughed and cleared his throat. “Act- actually, wit- with the crest feathers… I think it’s a boy….”

“Tag’s got a boyfriend!!” Sparrow called teasingly over the fence, hopping up on it and leaning over it. 

The black chocobo dropped Tag into its – apparently ‘his’ – nest and settled in behind him. Tag squirmed, but gave up when the chocobo started preening his hair. Ward was sure that a SOLDIER was stronger than any chocobo, even a black one. Tag could power his way out, but that could have risked hurting the bird. He smiled slightly to himself. Good man. 

_“Poor man though,”_ Ward thought, glancing at Sparrow and Aiji absolutely losing it. Aiji was at least trying to be discrete about it. Sparrow was just short of rolling on the ground. Randy was laughing too, behind his hand. Ward felt his own lips twitch up. It was… pretty funny. The mighty SOLDIER taken down by a love-struck feather duster. That’d make a story to tell… if they were going back to Shinra…. He inhaled deeply through his nose and forced the thought away.

“Ah, so Dusky finally nabbed ‘em,” a voice said from behind them. Ward looked over his shoulder, seeing Bill walking up behind them. Bill jerked his chin upwards in greeting, coming to a stop by the fence. He propped one foot up on the fence and gazed on at the drama in the chocobo pen. “I thought about warning ya, Dusky there likes gold and shiny things.” 

Sparrow snorted, but quickly covered his mouth and nose with both hands. 

Bill chucked and tilted his head, eyeing the chocobo as it cooed happily. “Figured he’d try to nab your friend at some point, what with the hair ‘n all.”

“Do- does he think Tag’s a-,” Aiji coughed, clearing his throat, “Does he think Tag’s a chocobo?”

Bill huffed, side-eyeing Aiji humorously. “Nah. Doesn’t mean he don’t got a crush though. Plenty of chocobos try to court humans just as much as other birds.” He snorted through his nose. “Dusky just likes shiny gold stuff. If I ever got a gold chocobo he’d be over the damned moon.”

“If I _saw_ a gold chocobo, _I’d_ be over the moon,” Aiji breathed.

“Hopefully,” Randy muttered, “we won’t need a gold chocobo to get him out of there.”

“Ah,” Bill chuckled. “I’ll get ‘em.” He eyed the black chocobo, who was cooing happily as he groomed Tag’s hair. Something that might have been a fond smile flickered across his lips. “In a minute.” He looked back at Aiji. “You work with chocobos?”

Aiji nodded slightly. “Yeah, I did, in Midgar, Wall Market. I was a stable hand until I was fourteen.”

“With Sam?”

Aiji blinked. “Yeah. You know him?” 

“Fer sure! We trade birds back and forth all the time.” A bright smile spread across Aiji’s face. “He’s real good with ‘em.”

“Yeah,” Aiji nodded, “Sam’s great.”

Tag appeared suddenly at the edge of the fence and pointed at the scarf of Reed’s uniform. “Can I have that?” Reed raised an eyebrow and handed it over without question. Tag yanked the scarf over his hair, tying it like a headscarf. Sparrow snickered as the black chocobo nosed at the back of Tag’s head and tried to figure out how to unwrap it. 

“Hey kid,” Bill said, a smug tone in his voice, looking over at Tag, “You ever think about breading chocobos?”

Sparrow lost it. 

~

“I hate you all…,” Tag grumbled, glaring straight ahead, not looking at any of them. 

“Aww, but Ni-San…,” Sparrow whined.

“Niisan.” Aiji snapped.

Tag didn’t move. 

Sparrow leaned into his field of view. Tag turned away form him, still glaring. A sly grin was spreading quickly across Sparrow’s face. “Are you embarrassed we caught you with your boyfriend? If you wanted some time alone, all you had to do was ask.” 

Tag snarled, his lip curling up to show off his teeth. Sparrow backed off a little but kept prodding Tag’s shoulder. “Come on big ol’ grumpy Ni-San….”

“Leave him alone, birdbrain,” Randy sighed, “You know he can beat you.”

“Don’t poke annoyed dragons,” Aiji said helpfully. 

“Well yeah, but-,” Sparrow started, cutting off abruptly when Tag shot to his feet. Sparrow blinked up at him curiously, but Tag didn’t even spare him a look as he left the room, closing the door near silently behind him. Sparrow, and the rest of the room actually, blinked at the shut door.

Sparrow looked around the room, a concerned expression on his face. “Was it- did I- what…?” He looked back at the door, an almost heartbroken expression on his face. 

Ward exchanged a look with Reed. ‘Do you want to deal with the moody SOLDIER or wrangle the others?’ Reed settled in his chair a little more. ‘Others’ for him then. Ward grunted as he pushed himself to his feet, grabbing his mug of coffee to take with him.

“I’ll go check on him.”

No one contested. 

Ward found Tag on the outside of the farmhouse, sitting on the deck with his legs hanging through the slats of the railing. He stared out at the chocobos, who were heading in for the night. Bill and two smaller figures were calling them into the barn, one by one. 

Ward approached Tag quietly, though he was more than sure he couldn’t sneak up on him even if he’d wanted to. He settled down next to Tag, sitting with his legs crossed. If he stuck them through the fence, he might never get them back out again. 

A long moment of silence passed between them, surrounded by the sounds of chocobos and crickets. “Coffee?” Ward offered, holding his mug towards Tag.

 _“No,”_ Tag mumbled in Wutaian. Ward looked at him worriedly out of the corner of his eye. Tag pressed his lips together. “No thank you,” he said in a murmur almost too soft to hear.

“You aren’t in trouble Tag.”

“Mm,” he nodded stiffly. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know….”

“Alright,” Ward hummed, taking a sip of his coffee. They sat in silence for another long moment. 

Ward felt like his ear were ringing, unused to such a quiet silence. Midgar was always loud, even when it was quiet. The mako reactors were never silent. And the only nights they’d spent out of Midgar were in camps, and those had their own sounds. He could barely remember what a quiet night in Mideel sounded like. But he thought it’d sound a bit like this. 

“I didn’t mean to get upset…,” Tag said finally.

“Few people ever do.”

“No, I just…,” Tag bit his lip. “I shouldn’t have gotten upset….”

“Because SOLDIERs don’t get to be upset?” Ward guessed. He vaguely remembered a conversation about that. An angry SOLDIER… well, the Genesis Rebellion was example enough. 

“No, well… yeah, but- that’s not what I meant,” Tag mumbled. “It was stupid. I knew I was overreacting, but I just-….” Tag huffed irritably through his nose. “It’s stupid.”

“If it makes you upset, it’s not stupid. And it’s not stupid to be upset.” 

Tag sighed softly, looking away, laying his head in his arms. “It is. I know it’s stupid. It’s just…,” he trailed off. Tag stared off in the distance for a long moment before he started again. 

“Midgar… is so different from my hometown. And every part of Midgar is so different from every other part. SOLDIERs and Turks are practically different breeds…. And then the infantry exists in a completely different world… with completely different rules and views…. And I-”

Tag let out a tired sounding sigh. He paused another moment, like he was picking a different road to try. Ward watched him silently. Tag bit his lip, rolling it between his teeth. “I like Wall Market. I’ve been there on missions…. I always go there for missions, but when I do, I feel like I’m having fun You can be whoever in Wall Market and no one gives a damn… it’s- I don’t have to pretend, be anything, or be anyone….”

Ward tilted his head. “You know you don’t have to pretend to be anyone with us Tag.”

“I know-,” he choked out, a soft choke that sounded like he was trying to hold it back. “I know that and that’s why it’s stupid. I know Aiji wouldn’t care. Or Randy. Or you…. And Sparrow and Reed wouldn’t really- But… I’m still scared. I’m scared that I might be wrong.” 

Ward placed a soft hand on Tag’s back, rubbing it gently. Tag shuddered under his hand like he was trying not to cry.

“SOLDIERs are so different from normal people…. They’re completely different,” Tag murmured. “…so, I’m always worried I’m doing something wrong.” 

Ward hummed softly, nodding his head. “Everyone worries about that sometimes. Some worry about it more than they should.” Tag let out a short breath. “There is nothing wrong with you, Tag. Not as a SOLDIER or as a person.” His lips quirked up a little. “I hate to tell you this, but there’s not a normal person in the world. We’re all different ‘breeds,’ different people.” 

Tag was quiet for a long time, inhaling sharply, probably sniffling, every few moments. Then, ever so slowly, he sat up. “Right. Thank you, Ward. I feel better now.” He shifted, pulling away to stand up. He didn’t look back at Ward. “I think I’ll go see if Bill wants any help in the stables.” And he walked away, soft footfalls crossing the deck until he’d left it.

Ward covered his eyes with his hand. He felt like that wasn’t true. He had the horrible feeling that he hadn’t helped at all.

~

Bill, and his grandkids, helped them saddle up the next morning, happily chatting with Aiji about Sam and chocobos and greens. Aiji said something about Sam dying his chocobos’ feathers different colors and Bill responded by snorting and muttering something about Gold Saucer ‘pizzazz’ leaking across the continents. 

Ward was worried though, despite the bright and cheerful morning. Tag hadn’t slept in the room last night, or if he had, he’d slipped in after Ward had gone to sleep – which had been well into the night – and left before any of them had awoken. 

Tag was dead-eyeing the black chocobo, taking care to stay well beyond the fence with a cap pulled low over his hair. The bird was crooning mournfully at him from the fence. He’d put on his new sunglasses as well, hiding the most SOLDIER identifying quality about him. He still had his SOLDIER knit top, but without the suspenders and fatigues, he looked like an ordinary citizen, not someone who could bench press half the squad without breaking a sweat. 

Randy cursed softly as his chocobo kept trying to eat the green ribbon out of his hair. “Down boy. That’s not for you.” The chocobo squawked irritably at him. 

“I told the others we should avoid Fort Condor,” Reed said, leaning against the saddle of Ward’s chocobo. He was talking to Ward and Ward was listening, despite how focused he was on Tag’s back, worrying to himself. 

“Hn.” 

“Shinra’s been sending troops there on and off, so it’d be better to avoid it completely,” Reed continued. 

“Hnm.” 

“Ouch!” Randy’s chocobo pulled sharply on his braid, trying to yank the green ribbon free. “Quit! Don’t eat that.” 

Bill whistled sharply. All the chocobos snapped their heads around to look at him. Only because he was staring at his back, did Ward notice Tag jolt and turn to look too. Bill sauntered over to Randy’s chocobo and tapped it on the beak, clicking his tongue. The bird ruffled its feathers and let out an irritated ‘Kweh’. But it settled down and stopped trying to eat the ribbon. Randy practically sagged in relief.

“There ya go lad,” Bill chuckled. “Billy! Help that one get on his bird.” He jerked his chin towards Sparrow, who was standing on one leg on the ground, the other leg was stuck slung over the saddle. It was a very impressive splits, even if he was stuck. 

“Yes please…,” Sparrow murmured meekly. Billy, Bill’s grandson, laughed to himself and jogged over to help him.

Ward looked back at Tag, who had finished saddling up his chocobo. He stuck one foot in the stirrup and gracefully swung himself up. The bird crooned happily when he leaned forward and scratched it under its beak. 

“Are… are you alright Ward…?” Reed asked softly. 

“Mm…,” he hummed. “I’ll be fine.” He shook his head to clear his thoughts. Tag would be fine. He was a SOLDIER. 

“Now don’t dawdle in the marsh if that’s where you’re going,” Bill instructed Aiji, who had apparently been dubbed chocobo pack leader.

“We’ll head up through the mountains,” Aiji responded. 

“That’s a longer way, a rougher ride.”

“We want to avoid the mines,” Aiji shrugged. That was partly true. They wanted to avoid the mines and the fort just beyond it. What they really wanted to avoid was Shinra. But they probably shouldn’t say that. Ward pulled himself up onto his own bird, watching the others do the same. “We’ll ride all the way to Junon then.”

Bill hummed, nodding his head. “Alright. But don’t send ‘em back then. There’s a stable right near the edge of Lower Junon, leave ‘em there with Caroline. Got it?” Aiji nodded. Bill stepped back and tipped his hat up, a friendly smirk flickering across his face. “Then, ya take care now, alright?”

“Will do,” Aiji responded, “You too Bill, kids.”

“Who’s a kid?!” Bill’s granddaughter scowled, planting her hands on her hips. 

Aiji laughed and nudged his bird forward. The chocobo let out a triumphant squawk and ran forward, the rest of the pack following behind it. 

~

Ward wasn’t used to riding chocobos, after less than an hour and a half, he seemed to lose all feeling below his waist. And that was barely after they started climbing through the mountains. The endless bouncing and rocking made him feel sick and dizzy. He’d never been one to complain though, and he refused to slow them down when they had such a short time limit. He was a little glad that Aiji had taken charge though…. He didn’t think he could shout orders without losing breakfast. 

Ward’s bird held out like a trooper though, managing to carry him over the craggy mountain paths and down the other side at an impressive speed. These weren’t mountain chocobos, but they handled the path well enough. Ward was almost scared to think about what riding a mountain chocobo through uncharted terrain would do to him. When they saw Junon on the horizon, he felt a wave of relief rush over him, nearly melting against the saddle. 

Aiji called back over the winds, “Remember to look for the stable near the edge of city limits! We’ll be close enough to see soon.” 

“What time is the inauguration parade?!” Randy shouted up to him. 

“Already passed, it was around noon!” Aiji responded. “But the Shinra ship is still docked so no others have gone out yet! If Cloud’s leaving on a ship, we can search manifestos!” 

“Just hope he didn’t decide to turn around…,” Reed mumbled, his bird keeping pace with Ward’s.

“Bite your tongue,” Ward grumbled, though he didn’t think Reed heard him. He was ready to get off this ride, and he didn’t want another one any time soon. 

The edge of Junon came into focus. Ward didn’t pay much attention to anything other than controlling the rolling of his stomach, but they ended up at a stable and Ward ended up leaning against a wall, sitting on a bale of hay. Reed patted his leg sympathetically, bravely sitting beside him. 

Randy and Aiji took the others to search the outbound ship manifestos, probably through less than legal means, knowing their styles. Reed had stayed behind to wait with him for the stable’s owner to drop off the chocobos.

About half an hour later, the rest of the squad returned with the strangest assortment of expressions on their faces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: the chocobos courting humans is based of ostriches doing that same thing! 
> 
> Thank you all for reading, both to new readers and returning!
> 
> (What will I update next? Nobody knows~ Thank you for your patience.)


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